Legend of a Suicide

Five short short stories and one longer one about suicide might not be your idea of a relaxing fireside read but by approaching the same event from a number of angles Vann is able to successfully express the manifold effects of such a traumatic event on those left behind.

In some of the stories (they could almost be chapters of a novel) the dead father is an ephemeral presence in the life of his son and mother; in others, his depression and concomitant failings as a father take centre stage. These failings have long-term consequences, in one case sending the now-grown son back to the town where his family and father imploded years before, in search of answers that probably don't exist.

Alaska plays as significant role in the book as the suicide, its desolation and the sheer difficulty of surviving its extreme climate a potent metaphor for the father's psychological and ultimately unsuccessful struggle with life itself.

Because Vann plays around with the facts in each story - changing some, keeping others - the book is weirdly dislocating to read. How many affairs did the father have, exactly? Where was the family living when he killed himself? And when, about halfway through, a massive twist hits you like a blow to the back of the head with a plank of wood, you'll feel more than dislocated by this curiously compelling elegy to a man who just couldn't make life work properly.