Dirt by David Vann review

David Vann’s stellar start falls off with his latest novel.

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30th May, 2012

Review

With the 2008 publication of Legend of a Suicide, David Vann established a reputation as one of the most exciting young American novelists at work. Suicide, less a book of short stories than what Vann has labelled a “fictional arc”, investigates his father’s suicide. It won the Prix Médicis in France and the Premi Llibreter in Spain for best foreign novel. There and in his novel Caribou Island, published last year, Vann has proved himself a writer with an unflinching gaze. In his examination of the multiple layers of a single story, he manages to persistently engage ...

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