Caribou Island (P.S.) - Softcover

"The reader's awareness of real deaths, real griefs, gives his work something of the lethal intensity of handling an unsheathed knife: at times the power is exhilarating, and at other times it cuts bloodily and to the quick."--Olivia Laing, New Statesman

"Beautifully gloomy....Compelling....["Caribou Island"] triumphs in its juxtaposition of claustrophobia-inducing relationships against the forbidding vastness of our 49th state....Vann uses chiseled phrases and verb-less declarations to evoke the natural ruggedness of the setting as well as the character's emotional distress."--Tyrone Beason, Seattle Times

"Arguably the first literary masterpiece to take place on the Kenai Peninsula. . . . Like a macabre machine, the narrative ratchets ever tighter until the closing image of one final, forlorn hope that will be smashed as soon as the story-telling stops and the reader closes the book."--Mike Dunham, Anchorage Daily News

"Reaffirms Vann as a talented conjurer of the natural world, and of our nakedness in the face of its power and cruel impassivity."--Ian Crouch, New Republic

"Vann summons an atmosphere of terrestrial and emotional permafrost so intense that it'll freeze your bones."--Lee Randall, Scotsman

"[Vann uses] American landscape as a metaphor to tremendous effect. . . . Vann's brilliance as a writer lies in his willingness to expose everything. . . . A writer to read and reread; a man to watch carefully."--The Economist

"Compelling. As the plot moves toward a gruesome finale, the reader is submerged in 'slow waves of pressure, water compacting but no edge to it.'"--New Yorker

"Vann keeps the pages turning with the skill of the best mystery novelists."--Patrick Condon, Associated Press

""Caribou Island" gets to places other novels can't touch. . . . Though it wears the clothes of realism--the beautiful exactness of the language, the unerring eye for detail--it takes us someplace darker, older, more powerful than the daylit world."--Kevin Canty, New York Times Book Review

"Vann is a poet of the animal swings between men and women struggling for the upper hand."--Karen R. Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer