The tone was set with his bestseller Sukkwan Island and developed in the two novels that followed (Impure and Wastes). A tone in the form of catharsis that does not even cover the part of the author forever marked by the suicide of his father which has left him his only inheritance of firearms collection. David Vann lived a violent childhood in a dysfunctional family. A childhood marked by bloody hunting parties within dune wilderness bitter and hostile that he must fight to progress step by step, stalk and kill.
Here is the salt of his work, the observation of how human relationships within family dune go on to develop the inevitable drama in dune Nature gigantic in its dimensions and isolates them from the rest of the world, thus making every possible including more unlikely.
Entering "Mountain Goat" one can not help but think "Deliverance" by James Dickey. Even heavy atmosphere. Even omnipresent and overwhelming kind. Same skids and psychological disorders leading to situations of extreme violence making the gap between men and animals increasingly tenuous.
But unlike "Deliverance", David Vann instead "Mountain Goat" under the sign of the Bible as if everything was going to happen was inevitable since Cain killed Abel and history of sest lHomme therefore placed under seal the murder, the only way dimposer his will. There is a sort of inevitability, of inescapable destiny nattend sopérer for the right circumstances. This is what we said David Vann in each of his four novels published jusquici and even more particularly in this latest installment.
One by which arrives the scandal is a boy of eleven years. A kid that comes from that he is able to walk his grandfather, a taciturn giant, his father lélève single lami of it in their endless hunts conducted in the huge family ranch and nestled in the heart of California mountains .
This part must however be different because it is the year in which the kid has to kill his first deer. But lorsquils will penetrate on their property, this is not a deer that they notice it in father's rifle scope but a poacher. Aimed his gun at his son that he observed the intruder itself, here the father who authorizes a gesture which no sattend. For the kid, without explanation, and will pull down the man, dead.
Therefore, the author takes us on a dark and crazy story where countless moral issues sentremêlent. What body? What to say or not? How to explain the gesture of the same? And especially that of a kid who do not néprouve any vis-à-vis regret what he has done as if shoot a deer or a man made no difference?
It is this last question, throbbing, first barely uttered then more and more openly formulated which will become the real issue of what is happening. An issue that reveals the repressed tensions within the group as to lead détape step in becoming paroxysmal to presquinsoutenables scenes sometimes.
David Vann is a kind of silversmith. He can keep us in suspense from beginning to end, raising a voltage almost without limit, imagine unexpected end while wielding a sharpened pen and as brutal as his characters. A very strong novel!
Published by Editions Gallmeister 2014 256 pages
Find my reading notes on thierrycollet-cetalir.blogspot.com
