Vann (Dirt) offers a meditation on violence set during a deer hunt on a Northern California mountain in 1978. The narrator recalls in flashback a few “days I want to remember in every smallest detail,” when his 11-year-old self, seeking his first buck, “just wanted to kill, constantly and without end.” But the hunt’s first victim proves to be a person, not a deer. The boy sights a poacher through his rifle scope and, purposefully but seemingly without conscious malice, shoots him dead. Through most of the narrative, the narrator, his father, grandfather, and family friend Tom quarrel about what to do with the body, for a time trussing it up like a dead deer. The men’s bonds gradually collapse until, in the harrowing climax, the grandfather reaches a decision, with Old Testament finality, about how to evade the consequences of the boy’s actions. The adult narrator steps out of flashback periodically to ponder the nature of killing: “There was no joy as complete and immediate as killing.” This flint-hard novel, in its intensity, will likely be compared to the work of Cormac McCarthy. (Sept.)
[Goat Mountain] may just may be his finest, most contemplative work to date.” — Booklist
“[M]asterful plotting.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“You’ve been waiting a long time for a novel that’ll capture your attention like this does, which makes Goat Mountain the book to hunt for.” — The Clermont Sun
“Vann has crafted a gripping masterpiece” — Anchorage Daily News
“Shocking. . . . The author’s descriptions of the northern California landscapethe chaparral, woods, and mountains-are also masterly. . . . This beautifully realized novel is recommended for fans of literary fiction but is not for the faint of heart.” — Library Journal (starred review)
“Vann’s third novel is his most visceral yet: a grinding examination of killing, God and the unnamable forces that create a dynasty of violence. . . . This book is as all of Vann’s fiction: provocative and unforgiving.” — Kirkus Reviews
“[A] deep meditation on death, religion and legacy.” — San Jose Mercury News
“Readers will devour Vann’s masterful plotting.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Meet David Vann, one the most talented writers in the American West. Goat Mountain, with all its responsibility and recriminations, is the man at his absolute finest.” — Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire Mysteries
“This book is written on the edge, a story of legacies, cruelty, the mysteries of DNA and blood, rewarding the reader sentence by sentence and scene by scene right to the astonishing and terrifying ending.” — Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek
“David Vann is at once the most timely and timeless of writers . . . Goat Mountain is a ravishing example of his mastery. . . . This book will touch you to the depths of our shared, flawed humanity.” — Robert Olen Butler, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
“The Story has the power of a bullet fired from a gun.” — The Economist
This book is written on the edge, a story of legacies, cruelty, the mysteries of DNA and blood, rewarding the reader sentence by sentence and scene by scene right to the astonishing and terrifying ending.
[M]asterful plotting.
[Goat Mountain] may just may be his finest, most contemplative work to date.
2013-08-15
Vann's third novel is his most visceral yet: a grinding examination of killing, God and the unnamable forces that create a dynasty of violence. An 11-year-old boy, his father, grandfather, and his father's best friend, Tom, make the trip to Goat Mountain, a vast family ranch, for their annual deer hunt. When they arrive, in the distance they see an orange-vested hunter sitting on a rock, a poacher on their land. The father spies on the stranger through the scope of his gun. He calls his son over to have a look. When the boy sights the poacher through the cross hairs, he pulls the trigger and shoots. The man is obviously dead--a giant hole through him--and now nothing will be the same. The boy, now a man, narrates this story in a staccato of images, as if remembrance is impossible when accessing the mind of a child, and says "[s]ome part of me was not right, and the source of that can never be discovered." The men call him a monster, but what can be done? The father throws the body into the back of the pickup, drives to their campsite and strings the man up as they do deer, year after year. The boy is so remorseless, he seems an innocent, and the grandfather wants him murdered (even tries to kill him one night). Tom wants to head back and tell the police, but the father doesn't know what to do, and so, in his moral inertia, he continues the hunting trip, making meals, flushing out game, sleeping at night, all as the dead man hangs and festers. The narrator meditates on the Bible and its glorification of violence, of our inescapable murderous legacy, and that "[t]he act of killing might even be the act that creates god." Nothing that begins so badly can end well, yet there is also something comforting in the inevitable; when a gun is loaded, the bullet yearns for a home. This book is as all of Vann's fiction: provocative and unforgiving.
You’ve been waiting a long time for a novel that’ll capture your attention like this does, which makes Goat Mountain the book to hunt for.
[M]asterful plotting.
Vann has crafted a gripping masterpiece
[A] deep meditation on death, religion and legacy.
[Goat Mountain] may just may be his finest, most contemplative work to date.
Meet David Vann, one the most talented writers in the American West. Goat Mountain, with all its responsibility and recriminations, is the man at his absolute finest.
The Story has the power of a bullet fired from a gun.
David Vann is at once the most timely and timeless of writers . . . Goat Mountain is a ravishing example of his mastery. . . . This book will touch you to the depths of our shared, flawed humanity.