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A review by karieh13
Caribou Island by David Vann
3.0
“Caribou Island” is a book that magnified my impression of the very short amount of time I spent in Alaska. I found it to be an amazing place, one of breathtaking beauty and awe inspiring spectacles of nature…but from the second I got off the plane…I felt that this was a place that humans were not meant to be. There’s something about the sky – about the very air that felt like a pregnant pause. That nature was just waiting, patiently for now, for people to leave so she could reclaim what was hers.
This book takes place in Alaska, and several of the characters, after living most or all of their lives there, seem to be coming to that conclusion as well. This book chronicles a tipping point in a family’s lives that is desperate and dark and seemingly inevitable.
“At the moment, though, Alaska felt like the end of the world, a place of exile. Those who couldn’t fit anywhere else came here, and if they couldn’t cling to anything here, they just fell off the edge. These tiny towns in a great expanse, enclaves of despair.”
Gary and Irene are the main characters, spouses whose marriage has evolved to a point where they are leaving their home to build a primitive cabin on an island just in time for winter. Neither seems to find any joy in the project (or in their lives as a whole) but Gary relentlessly pushes on and Irene, nearly incapacitated by headaches, feels compelled to keep pace with him in this endeavor.
“We have to get this load out to the island, he yelled back, and then he pulled another log, so Irene followed, though she knew she was being punished. Gary could never do this directly. He relied on the rain, the wind, the apparent necessity of the project. It would be a day of punishment. He would follow it, extend it for hours, drive them on, a grim determination, like fate. A form of pleasure to him. Irene followed him because once she had endured she could punish. Her turn would come. And this is what they had done to each other for decades now, irresistibly.”
Their daughter, Rhoda, seems a bit oblivious to the bleakness of her parent’s marriage…yet not completely as she seems to be making some choices that might lead her life to the same hopeless place.
“Rhoda could see how marriage might feel lonely. A new feeling she couldn’t quite describe or even reach. Something at the edges, something she didn’t like. She could imagine long periods of time in which they wouldn’t say much to each other, just moving individually around the house.”
It seems hard to believe that any of these people ever experienced real love or any fulfilling kind of human connection. Their interactions with one another seem barely normal on the surface and filled with rage and pain underneath. Although I was interested in their stories and wanted to find out the details of the ending, I kept wondering how on earth they’d remained even this stable this long.
They grit out their lives, living – just because. Until nature, or their natures, overtake them, take back what is hers and their humanity is banished.
This book takes place in Alaska, and several of the characters, after living most or all of their lives there, seem to be coming to that conclusion as well. This book chronicles a tipping point in a family’s lives that is desperate and dark and seemingly inevitable.
“At the moment, though, Alaska felt like the end of the world, a place of exile. Those who couldn’t fit anywhere else came here, and if they couldn’t cling to anything here, they just fell off the edge. These tiny towns in a great expanse, enclaves of despair.”
Gary and Irene are the main characters, spouses whose marriage has evolved to a point where they are leaving their home to build a primitive cabin on an island just in time for winter. Neither seems to find any joy in the project (or in their lives as a whole) but Gary relentlessly pushes on and Irene, nearly incapacitated by headaches, feels compelled to keep pace with him in this endeavor.
“We have to get this load out to the island, he yelled back, and then he pulled another log, so Irene followed, though she knew she was being punished. Gary could never do this directly. He relied on the rain, the wind, the apparent necessity of the project. It would be a day of punishment. He would follow it, extend it for hours, drive them on, a grim determination, like fate. A form of pleasure to him. Irene followed him because once she had endured she could punish. Her turn would come. And this is what they had done to each other for decades now, irresistibly.”
Their daughter, Rhoda, seems a bit oblivious to the bleakness of her parent’s marriage…yet not completely as she seems to be making some choices that might lead her life to the same hopeless place.
“Rhoda could see how marriage might feel lonely. A new feeling she couldn’t quite describe or even reach. Something at the edges, something she didn’t like. She could imagine long periods of time in which they wouldn’t say much to each other, just moving individually around the house.”
It seems hard to believe that any of these people ever experienced real love or any fulfilling kind of human connection. Their interactions with one another seem barely normal on the surface and filled with rage and pain underneath. Although I was interested in their stories and wanted to find out the details of the ending, I kept wondering how on earth they’d remained even this stable this long.
They grit out their lives, living – just because. Until nature, or their natures, overtake them, take back what is hers and their humanity is banished.