Aquarium

Twelve-year-old Caitlin lives alone with her mother in subsidised housing next to an airport in Seattle. Each day, while she waits to be picked up after school, Caitlin visits the local aquarium to study the fish. Gazing at the creatures within the watery depths, Caitlin accesses a shimmering universe beyond her own. When she befriends an old man at the tanks one day, who seems as enamoured of the fish as she, Caitlin cracks open a dark family secret and propels her once-blissful relationship with her mother towards a precipice of terrifying consequence.


In crystalline and graceful prose, Aquarium takes us into the heart of a brave young girl whose longing for love and capacity for forgiveness transform the damaged people around her. Relentless and heartbreaking, primal and redemptive, Aquarium is a transporting story from one of the best writers working today.


David Vann's internationally bestselling books have won fifteen prizes, including best foreign novel in France and Spain, and appeared on seventy-five Best Books of the Year lists in a dozen countries. David is currently a Professor at the University of Warwick in England and Honorary Professor at the University of Franche-Comte in France.


'One of the most exciting writers at work today.' Australian


'[Vann] is the real thing - a mature, risk-taking and fantastically adept fiction writer who dares go to the darkest places, explore their most appalling corners.' Observer


'Vann's prose is as pure as a gulp of water from an Alaskan stream.' Financial Times


'One of the most darkly talented and unsettling writers working today.' Guardian


'Vann is a brave writer, daring to write about and depict things that most other authors would baulk at, but that's what makes him so good - that unflinching eye for the darkness you could potentially find in any of us, given the wrong chain of events.' Independent