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Caribou Island
Caribou Island
Nov 28, 2025 1:12 PM

Author:David Vann

Caribou Island

On a small island in a glacier-fed lake on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, a marriage is unravelling.

Gary, driven by thirty years of diverted plans, and Irene, haunted by a tragedy in her past, are trying to rebuild their life together. Following the outline of Gary's old dream, they're hauling logs out to Caribou Island in good weather and in terrible storms, in sickness and in health, to patch together the kind of cabin that drew them to Alaska in the first place.

Across the water on the mainland, Irene and Gary's grown daughter, Rhoda is starting her own life. She fantasizes about the perfect wedding day, whilst her betrothed, Jim the dentist, wonders about the possibility of an altogether different future.

From the author of the massively-acclaimed Legend of a Suicide, comes a devastating novel about a marriage, a couple blighted by past shadows and the weight of expectation, of themselves and of each other. Brilliantly drawn and fiercely honest in its depiction of love and disappointment, David Vann's first novel confirms him as one of America's most dazzling writers of fiction.

Reviews

Gets to places other novels can't touch

—— New York Times

An extravagantly gifted and moving writer

—— Sunday Times

Wields an unforgiving, elemental power that is breathtaking to read

—— Independent on Sunday

Beautiful, richly atmospheric . . . deserves to consolidate Vann's position among America's literary high flyers

—— Evening Standard

The prose here frequently achieves a quite astonishing beauty

—— Daily Telegraph

A novel of fine artistry and stark emotional truth - full of our darkest currents and faintest sounds

—— The Times

A writer to read and reread

—— Economist

Beautifully written and bitterly funny

—— Financial Times

Caribou Island is a scant 300 pages, and written in prose as pellucid as the rivers he used to fish as a boy. But it says so much: about men and women, about marriage, about the desperate gap between who we want to be and who we are

—— Observer

Diary of an Ordinary Woman is certainly more gripping and more immediate than many novels...Forster has pulled off an imaginative feat

—— Literary Review

Captivating... Like a beloved granny's visit, we're a little bit sorry to see the end approaching

—— Irish Times

This rich novel, full of pathos, concerns the unbridgeable gaps between generations

—— Daily Telegraph

Faulks's most vivid character is the odious John Veals, a hedge-fund manager, who relishes all the money that he makes and the power that he quietly exerts... Veals is brilliantly insidious... A thoughtful page-turner... The handsome sunset is heavily, and rightly, weighed down by dark clouds

—— The Times

A tragedy at sea, a miracle on paper... Moore offers us, elegantly, exultantly, the very consciousness of her characters. In this way, she does more than make us feel for them. She makes us feel what they feel, which is the point of literature and maybe even the point of being human.

—— Globe and Mail

This mesmerising book is full of tears, and is a graceful meditation on how to survive life's losses

—— Marie Claire

Fans of Anita Shreve and Anne Enright will love this

—— Viv Groskop , Red Magazine

The gentle, meandering pace of this exquisitely expresses the agony of grief and the confusions and complexities of parental love

—— Easy Living

Moore's portrayal of loss is remarkably real

—— Clare Longrigg , Psychologies

Profoundly moving, beautifully written book

—— Waterstone's Books Quarterly

A marvellous book

—— Winnipeg Free Press

A perfectly pitched novel that captures its characters and their dilemmas.

—— Woman and Home

Lose yourself in a fantastical gastronomical journey ... This novel explores familial love in an unexpected way, and you'll be hooked from the first taste

—— She

This emotional and moving tale blew us away with its beauty

—— Bella

It's as beautiful as it is strange. Bender writes such lyrical sentences, you pause over them in wonder. She has an unusual take on life; and makes even the ordinary extraordinary. It's a compulsive page turner. This book is already a best seller in America, and has been embraced by book clubs. I loved it. It's one of those books you don't want to finish - and even when you have - it stays in your mind. Bender has written three previous novels. I intend to savour them all

—— Irish Examiner

This novel, in the style of stories like Chocolat, is a dreamy feast of gorgeous writing ... Gently, beautiful, odd, this is a story to sip and savour

—— Dublin Evening Herald

An intriguing premise for an original novel about a family and its relationships

—— Good Book Guide

Moving and highly original, this book will make you look at food in a whole new light

—— Star
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