Goat Mountain

A sensation in France and elsewhere in Europe, David Vann is a writer of brutally unsparing narratives. This book, one of his best, surprises, shocks, and horrifies—and sometimes amuses, too—and all at once.

It is a story about a family on what should be nothing more than a hunting trip. Only after a senseless murder, it becomes a meditation on the power of myth. The story is as real as real gets, though it’s far larger than that. It becomes the stuff of revelatory—and prophetic—nightmares. It’s a big dark dream of a book, unforgettable.