4.5 stars really
I like David Vann’s style. Even when his stories are dark, there are small sparks of hope – particularly in the kids. The worse the characters behave, the more they need forgiveness. How much is too much? What can be forgiven and what can’t?

Caitlin is a lonely 12-year old who lives with her single mum, Sheri, a dock worker, who has just started dating Steve.

Caitlin jealously tries to ignore Steve, just her mother’s latest man, but can’t help being attracted by his inclusive conversations. And she’s been befriended by an old guy at the aquarium that she visits every afternoon after school, waiting for her mother to get off work.

Caitlin is open to learning everything there is to know, by studying the fish; Sheri is determined to hide as much as she can; Steve is struggling to be a cheerful middleman; the old man is a sympathetic shoulder for Caitlin; and then there’s Shalini - this dusky, spicy, lush Indian girl who is Caitlin’s first real crush and vice-versa. They are a joyous pair indeed.

As her past is revealed, Sheri freaks out, and becomes agitated and abusive, attempting to show Caitlin how much she suffered herself as a child. Sheri blows hot and cold, and Caitlin responds, adoring but terrified. She feels as confined as the fish she loves. Of their small apartment:

“Back in our aquarium, as territorial and easily found as any fish. We had only four places to hide in this tank: the couch, the bed, the table, and the bathroom. If you checked those four spots, you’d always find us . . . The only question was who was outside, looking in.”

She has a lot on her mind for a 12-year-old, but mostly she’s scared of her mother disappearing.

“I had nightmares all the time in which she was underneath a crane in the port and one of those huge containers flying through the air above her. We know fish are always on guard, hiding at the mouth of a cave or in seaweed or clung to coral, trying to look invisible, Their ends could come from anywhere, at any time, a larger mouth out of the dark and all instantly gone. But aren’t we the same? A car accident at any moment, a heart attack, disease, one of those containers coming loose and falling through the sky, my mother below and not even looking up, seeing and feeling nothing, just the end.”

I liked the way the everyday ‘normalness’ of Steve is the magnet that pulls the others together. We don’t know him, but we sure see his effect on everyone else. Troubled they all may be, but I think Caitlin is going to be okay.

“Like a leaf giving birth to stars………..Body of small green leaves, veined, very thin, its fins painted in light cast from elsewhere, but from his eye out his long snout, an eruption of galaxies without foreign source, born in the fish itself. An opening in the small fabric of the world, a place to fall into endlessly.”

Aquarium is the fifth full length novel by American author, David Vann. It is set in 1994 and narrated by twelve-year-old Caitlin Thompson. Caitlin’s world revolves around three important elements: her hardworking single mother, Sheri; her best friend at school, Indian émigré Shalini Anand; and her afternoon visits to the Seattle Aquarium. The year is drawing to a close, class involves making a paper-mache Divali Reindeer and Sheri has finally met a decent man, Steve, when Caitlin encounters an old man at the Aquarium, an old man who seems as fascinated by the fish as she is. And who seems very interested in her life.

Vann gives the reader a very diverse cast of characters: the effervescent Shalini; the admirably balanced Steve; the damaged and resentful Sheri; the earnestly repentant Bob. Of course, Caitlin, with her optimism, her love and her capacity for compassion, outshines them all. Their interactions are sometimes funny, sometimes decidedly uncomfortable, sometimes shockingly raw, but fans of Vann’s work will know not to expect a novel filled with sweetness and light. His work has been described as confronting. The plot takes a few unexpected turns before arriving at a startling climax.

While readers may find the lack of quotation marks for speech irritating, this is more than compensated for by the gorgeous descriptive passages, especially, but not only, those about fish. “You’re in trouble, Shalini whispered in my ear, leaning close. All the little hairs stood up on my neck and I had goose bumps. Shalini could make me shiver, as if my entire body were a bell that had just been struck” Another excellent offering from David Vann.
4.5 stars