Advance Praise for A Mile Down

Lists and Prizes:

Reviews:

"The reportorial relentlessness of Vann’s imagination often makes his fiction seem less written
than chiseled. A small, lovely book has been written out of his large and evident pain. “A father,
after all,” Vann writes, “is a lot for a thing to be.” A son is also a lot for a thing to be; so is an
artist. With “Legend of a Suicide,” David Vann proves himself a fine example of both."

"With "Legend of a Suicide," Vann looks into the dark and isolated heart of the American soul. It
is a devastating journey that is difficult to read but impossible to put down and equally
impossible to forget."


"Based on his father’s suicide 28 years ago, MJ contributor David Vann’s debut fiction collection
is as primal and unforgiving as the Alaskan wilds where it’s set."

"The book is as dark, stormy, and beautiful as the ragged Aleutian coast."

“Vann uses startling powers of observation to create strong characters, tense scenes and
genuine surprises.”

"The best story in the collection is a novella. More than 100 pages, it's a sparkling
achievement that is equally mesmerizing and unnerving."

"A piercing communiqué from author David Vann to his own father. It is a message of
profound sympathy and sadness, anger and regret. The novella’s final lines seem, in a sense,
to belong to the character Jim Fenn, his real-life counterpart James Vann, and author and
son David Vann, all at once."

  "Anyone who lives long enough or wide enough, is certain to be damaged, directly or indirectly
  by suicide. It is this heavy betrayal that freights the stories in David Vann’s new collection of
  stories “Legend of a Suicide.”"

Interviews:

Blogs and other mentions:

  "It’s been 28 years since Vann’s father’s suicide, so he’s had the time and distance to
  transform family tragedy into art. The stories in Legend of a Suicide are simply beautiful,
  reinventing a terrible past and making sense out of chaos."

Endorsements:

"This is one of the most striking fictional debuts in recent memory, and David Vann is an important new
voice in American literature."--Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from
a Strange Mountain

"As the title suggests, the stories in Legend of a Suicide approach a private mythos, revisiting,
reinvestigating and reinventing one family's broken past. They also transport us to wild, uncharted
places on the Alaskan coast and in the American soul. Throughout, David Vann is a generous,
surehanded guide in some very dangerous territory."--Stewart O'Nan, author of Last Night at the
Lobster and Snow Angels: A Novel

“The characters in these stories are extreme in their isolation from one another, whether they come
together in a howling wind or in the comforts of a warm kitchen. Here is suicide, infidelity, madness; here
are people whose skewed optimism about the next love affair, the next career, the next homestead,
proves deadly. . . . Memory, affection for place, the mangled ways we manage to express the love we
feel—David Vann is unafraid of the weight and the complication of these things. He is emboldened in
these stories to fall headlong into the disorienting wilderness of the human heart and mind.”--Noy
Holland, contest judge and author of What Begins with Bird

"In his portrayal of a young son's love for his lost father David Vann has created a stunning work of
fiction: surprising, beautiful and intensely moving"--Nadeem Aslam, author of Maps for Lost Lovers and
The Wasted Vigil

"The most powerful, and pure, piece of writing I have read for a very long time. This book squeezes
more life out of the first 100 pages than most books could manage in 1000, which is pretty impressive,
considering it's a book about death."--Ross Raisin, author of Out Backward