Gary decides to move himself and his wife Irene from their home on the shore of Skilak Lake in Alaska to an island in the lake where he wants to build a cabin. His practical skills and planning leave something to be desired and Irene has her own ghosts to deal with.

David Vann's writes some more about Alaska, dentists cheating on their partners, men wanting to live a wilderness life without the necessary practical skills, parental suicide. I like his style but I will look at some later books to see if he's got these themes out of his system yet. ( )

Be forewarned, this is one depressing read. The characters are somewhat tragi-comic, stubbornly persisting in creating the most miserable lives for themselves. ( )

In David Vann’s novel, the harsh Alaskan landscape and its weather seems to have a depressing effect upon its inhabitants, many of whom appear to regret coming to Soldotna and dream of escaping. The chilling atmosphere seems to also seep over into the relationships between people, typified by Irene’s increasing antipathy towards her husband, Gary. His projects have all had a habit of going wrong and his latest, to build them a cabin on the uninhabited Caribou Island, fills Irene with foreboding and contributes to her feeling very unwell. She has never recovered form her father leaving the family when she was small and her mother’s subsequent suicide and she also worries that her daughter, Rhoda, is repeating the family’s path of loveless marriages.
Vann’s sparse prose captures the bleakness of the setting and the people, leading to a dramatic and revealing finale.

Very tense and ultimately suspenseful for a novel about the unraveling of a mind and a relationship. The two or three peripheral characters and their relationships provide painful foil to the central story of Irene and Gary – married for 30 years, the disappointment, disgust and blame at the boiling point. Irene’s silent rebuke, her martyrdom and submission to Gary’s plans only to highlight his failures in starker relief is agonizing to witness (and see a former self in.) Finally, the author’s description of the construction of the cabin was rich with detail – the sense of desperation as the object realized from inadequate skill does not come close to measuring up to the dream and becomes the final albatross about the neck. ( )

Im giving this book a fair rating because it was written really well and I quite enjoyed the Alaskan setting, I also rather enjoyed the interesting characters, and I was drawn into their world and routing for them to have a happy ending.
Wow - was I hit in the face with an unhappy ending. I feel like there should be some sort of a warning for JUST HOW DEPRESSING THIS NOVEL IS. Now because I am interested in reading about mental health, I gave it a fair rating, if I wasnt interested, i would give this book a poor rating, because it is so grim and not in a fun terrifying way- it is actually rather disgusting and envoked a lot of deep rooted emotions from me.
I actually have to take a break to recooperate from it. ( )