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    Dirt: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Dirt: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Dirt: A Novel
    Ebook263 pages4 hours

    Dirt: A Novel

    By David Vann

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The year is 1985, and twenty-two-year-old Galen lives with his emotionally dependent mother in a secluded old house surrounded by a walnut orchard in a suburb of Sacramento. He doesn't know who his father is, his abusive grandfather is dead, and his grandmother, losing her memory, has been shipped off to a nursing home. Galen and his mother survive on the family's trust fund—old money that his aunt, Helen, and seventeen-year-old cousin, Jennifer, are determined to get their hands on.

    Galen, a New Age believer who considers himself an old soul, yearns for transformation: to free himself from the corporeal, to be as weightless as air, to walk on water. But he's powerless to stop the manic binges that overtake him, leading him to fixate on forbidden desires. A prisoner of his body, he is obsessed with thoughts of the boldly flirtatious Jennifer and dreams of shedding himself of the clinging mother whose fears and needs weigh him down.

    When the family takes a trip to an old cabin in the Sierras, near South Lake Tahoe, tensions crescendo. Caught in a compromising position, Galen will discover the shocking truth of just how far he will go to attain the transcendence he craves.

    An exhilarating portrayal of a legacy of violence and madness, Dirt is an entirely feverish read.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 24, 2012
    ISBN9780062121080
    Unavailable
    Dirt: A Novel
    Author

    David Vann

    Published in twenty languages, David Vann's internationally bestselling books have won fifteen prizes, including best foreign novel in France and Spain, and have appeared on seventy-five Best Books of the Year lists in a dozen countries. He's written for the New York Times, Atlantic, Esquire, Outside, Sunset, Men's Journal, McSweeney's, and many other publications, and he has been a Guggenheim, Stegner, and NEA fellow.

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    Reviews for Dirt

    3.5/5

    13 ratings12 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I was excited to read this novel as I was very impressed by the author’s dark style in Caribou Island. I was, unfortunately, disappointed in his latest effort here. Having read Caribou Island, I went into Dirt fully expecting to be swept into a horrifyingly dark world. So it was no surprise to land in a world of family violence, incest, and mental illness. While fairly graphic and not for the faint of heart, the author’s writing style is compelling. It speaks to his talent that despite my developing a near contempt for the characters, and a feeling of exhaustion as the plot seemed to drag, I finished the novel. I think I finished it only because his writing style is so stark, horrifying and riveting that it’s just impossible to turn away. Sadly, the gripping writing is the only saving grace here. The author writes of family pathos in a way that is so horrifying you have to keep reading in spite of your horror. The far-reaching consequences of family dysfunction, taken to its most extreme conclusion, are presented without holding any punches. But the actions of the characters are so extreme, and so horrific, that it was impossible to find any kind of a foothold to connect with any of them. Where in Caribou Island, the reader got to witness the characters’ slow spiral, and thereby connect with their humanity before it unraveled, here we are introduced to characters already past the point of no return and for whom it was just not possible, at least for me, to develop any kind of concern.The pace of the plot was not even, and the tension not consistent enough to prevent the novel from feeling like a slog in many places. The first third dragged, the middle third picked up and showed some promise, but in the final third, any tension generated by the climax of the novel was undone by the main character’s lengthy free associations about transcendence. These often occurred just as plot tension was finally building, so that reading the last portion became endlessly frustrating. In the end, I continue to admire the unique and stark writing style of this clearly talented author. I wish I had enjoyed this latest effort much more than I did, but while the writing style continues to impress, the lack of character development and the inconsistent pacing made this a difficult read.
    • 5/5
      This is easily one of the best novels that I've read in some time. We got a chance to see David Vann read and answer questions at Moe's Books and he was very funny. There were some of his in-laws in the crowd and maybe that made him extra nervous, or whatever, but his comments between readings were so delightfully bizarre and funny. He made the new book enticing, and we were both already primed to buy it, based on his previous exciting novel, Caribou Island. His writing here is just as fabulous and the subject matter as wonderfully disturbing. At Moe's he said that he has always had a troubled relationship with his mother. He still sees a counselor about the mother-son dynamic and that's very much reflected in the novel. All of the family members in the book are dysfunctional, but it's the intense problems between our main character, twenty-two-year-old Galen, and his mother that really come to a head at the book's end. I'm not going to say anything else about the plot, other than—it's simple, unexpected, and bizarre. What I want to mention, is the beauty of Vann's language. His short sentences are divine. In structure, they harken to the simplicity of a Hemingway. And like reading a great Cormac McCarthy novel, his writing is almost too good. You will find yourself stopping and rereading lines, to see just how he does so much with simple words. So much is expressed in so few words. When he is writing about the Central Valley it is a brutal beauty. Inferno and hell are easy terms to describe the intense heat that bakes the soil and the mind here, but Vann is also able to recreate so many states of mind that come about when working, moving, or just breathing, in a searing heat at 100 degrees and more. The other masterly expressed reality that Vann handles with seeming ease, is when he writes about the dirt that makes up the valley. Dirt is so much more than a title, it takes over the last part of the book. Galen's connection with reality becomes very tenuous at times in the book, leading to the following "dirt" passage. "Galen didn't know what any of it meant, but he knew dirt was his teacher. At every moment, unexpected, dirt was showing him something. Better than going to a university. He might never go, even with all the money. He might just stay right here, in this old house and orchard, and learn everything." Another passage that struck me, was dealing with Galen's grandmother who has been put in a "home" for her own good. "Do you know what it's like to not remember?" "No." "It's like being no one, but still having to live anyway." It's a thrill to have read this book once and to know how good it will be to return to again.
    • 3/5
      I had never read anything by Stuart Woods before; I didn’t think the works of the prolific author of thrillers would be my cup of tea. I tried this one on a dare of sorts, and I must say, it was at least readable, despite its characters’ conspicuous consumption, casual misogyny, and homophobia. I don’t think I will be continuing the series, however.
    • 2/5
      Gossip maven becomes a target of blackmail--it doesn't get better than that, does it? Stuart Woods stories along quickly and the main character has sex with most of the females in the book. This book's a light little "whodunit" story, with very little character depth or development. Woods is a great suspense author and knows how to keep his readers interested but the Stone Barrington series is trashy.
    • 3/5
      Another great one - Gossip maven becomes a target of blackmail.Did you ever notice that Stuart Woods never describes how Stone Barrington looks? He likes to leave that up to your imagination. I'm thinking Thorsten Kaye (Zach Slater) from All My Children.
    • 3/5
      Well, seems not to be an improvement from the first. I kept wondering from the start if this was where the tv series Dirt originated and that thought stayed as a distraction while I was reading. Everything is just there, there are no real thrills :(
    • 4/5
      Another popcorn book....fun, fast, and filled with what they term as "naughty fun".
    • 1/5

      Once upon a time there was a halfway decent thriller writer called Stuart Woods. I wonder whatever happened to him? I can't begin to tell you all the reasons I disliked this book, from the dire plotting to the snobbishness to the to the ghastly characters to the badly written smut.

      Try something like his much earlier Under the Lake instead.
    • 2/5
      I believe this was the only Stuart Woods book that I didn't like.
    • 3/5
      Ok story about the investigation of the source of a series of embarassing leasks about a scandal journalist. Things turn nasty and involve a lot more than simple scandal.
    • 4/5
      Feared and loathed for her poison pen and ice queen persona, Amanda Dart has made her share of enemies. Then the tables are turned. An anonymous gossipmonger is faxing Amanda's personal and private peccadilloes to anyone who can read. Desperate to save her reputation, she enlists the help of New York lawyer and private investigator Stone Barrington to learn the identity of the faxer. And everyone in the world of tabloid journalism becomes a suspect.
    • 4/5
      First time in a very long time indeed that I’ve read a novel by an American novelist. Surely David Vann writes in a powerful, suspense-rich manner that keeps you going where you as a reader no longer want to go. His sentences are short and sparse. His dialogues are naturally flowing, obviating the need for all kinds of punctuation. His sex scenes are hot and some of the best ever written, from the perspective of a lust filled virgin boy. Especially his remarks that intercourse beats any type of state of nirvana is much appreciated. I suspected all the time that his grandfather would prove to be also his father, but that didn’t become quite clear in the end. The boy seems quite sane when he finally completes the killing of his mom. But there are many toe-curling moments before that when I wanted to shout to either him or her to stay cool and act responsibly. I also like the toe-curling humour, like the joke Galen makes each time they pass the shopping mall, about the cake they have there. The repetition does it and the hatred of the others in the car becomes palpable at some stage.

      1 person found this helpful