Goat Mountain

'Goat Mountain by David Vann shows us viscerally that there is no there-there, that humans have to constantly renegotiate what real is, that the rules, laws, commandments are all man-made, and that every time a few people enter a room and close the door or get stuck in the middle of nowhere, there's going to be a skirmish between spirit and bone. This novel exposes a sort of reality that we all glean but are happy to pretend not to notice. Read it.' -- Kirkus Reviews 'The lure of elsewhere saturates the American myth, where escape is not always just escape but the promise of a fresh start, too. In extremis, this instinct for flight can become a longing for purity, for a world unfallen. It's hard to think of an American writer who knows this more intimately that David Vann. The Alaska that rise from his pages bears little resemblance to Sarah Palin's hunting paradise. It is a state full of misfits and violent, bitter fishermen. The farthest lip of the American continent, it is where dreams go to die.' Weekend Australian 'Vann is downright masterly, mining his rich thematic seams with rugged endurance...It's an unflattering look at the human race's primordial origins, yet it's a hugely rewarding experience. Vann doesn't pull any punches, but we wouldn't want it any other way.' Three Thousand 'A provocative novel that explores our most primal urges and beliefs, the bonds of blood and religion that define and secure us, and the consequences of our actions. Vann writes with grace and intensity.' Daily Telegraph 'Goat Mountain is a full-blooded return to form...Some of the set-pieces are magnificent and the story itself is relentless. The boy's predicament-both the physical danger he faces and his confusion at finding he exists in a moral vacuum from which no one can help him escape-grips you by the throat...David Vann is at war with sentimentality. I found it impossible to look away.' Metro, New Zealand 'This story has the power of a bullet fired from a gun.' Economist 'What Vann does so well is to take recognisably ordinary characters and put them in critical situations, where tiny decisions or actions have life-altering outcomes. This is what gives his books their nightmarish quality -- the feeling that these events could happen to anyone.' Irish Independent 'Since his 2008 debut, Vann has been compared to the likes of Melville, Hemingway, Faulkner and McCarthy-sometimes coming out ahead. It's not hype. Easily one of the most exciting writers of the past decade, Vann keeps proving with each addition to his small but stunning oeuvre that he is not a fluke. Goat Mountain wrestles with no less than God, morality, the very origin of man and his nature. It comes out alive. Ambitious and potent, both Vann and Goat Mountain amaze.' -- BookPage 'This book is written on the edge, a story of legacies, cruelty, the mysteries of DNA and blood, rewarding the reader sentence by sentence and scene by scene right to the astonishing and terrifying ending.' -- Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek 'David Vann is at once the most timely and timeless of writers, a literary master of humankind's primal embrace of violence, against others and against ourselves.' -- Robert Olen Butler, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain 'Vann brings this existentialist family drama about living and killing to life powerfully and convincingly through a charismatic, violent grandfather, a well-meaning father, and the father's dangerous, sometimes inscrutable 11-year-old son, who kills two men on this ill-fated trip. The author's descriptions of the northern California landscape-the chaparral, woods, and mountains-are also masterly...This beautifully realized novel is recommended for fans of literary fiction but is not for the faint of heart.' Library Journal 'This flint-hard novel, in its intensity, will likely be compared to the work of Cormac McCarthy.' Publishers Weekly 'His finest, most contemplative work to date. Booklist 'Phenomenal. Goat Mountain is a shocking, dark novel, written in fiery images, brimming with sensory details.' De Standaard, Netherlands 'Goat Mountain is a brilliant and wise interrogation of a world in which We were always killing something, and it seemed we were put here to kill .' The Times 'In this powerful tale of the complicated fragility of family ties...internationally acclaimed and bestselling author David Vann convincingly conjures up the primeval atmosphere of the uninhabited wilderness and the depth of the hunting instinct. The spirit of the Old Testament is never very far from his prose, and the story of Cain and Abel hovers over the boy's sense of right and wrong. This is tense and unsettling stuff, difficult to put down and disturbingly memorable.' Daily Mail