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Book at Bedtime: David Vann - Caribou Island

Book at Bedtime: David Vann - Caribou Island: Episode 6

Drama: Relationships & Romance

Caribou Island

Episode 6

David Vann - Caribou Island

BBC Radio 4 - Book at Bedtime, David Vann - Caribou Island, Episode 6

Despite her headaches, Irene goes to see Gary's cabin work and Jim dreams of a new life.

Despite continued headaches, Irene goes to see Gary's cabin work and Jim dreams of a new life. Read by William Hope.

Caribou Island is set in David Vann's native Alaska, amid the icy, glacier fed lakes and the remote islands covered in alder and Sitka spruce. And it is on such island, far from any habitation, that Gary, a mediaevalist who fled to Alaska thirty years with his young wife Irene, in search of an unattainable idyll, is now determined to begin once again. He will build a simple cabin there and at last find peace. Irene joins him in his endeavour, understanding, unlike her husband, that there are costs. 

Meanwhile her daughter Rhoda dreams of marriage with Jim, a dentist, who is about to enter his own 'mid-life crisis'. 

Fluid and sometimes raw, David Vann explores the depths an unravelling marriage can sink to and the hopes the young still entertain. 

Today: Irene's headaches seem to have no physical cause. Can it be the strain of the cabin project? And can it really be that small? Meanwhile without Monique, Jim plans to make it up to Rhoda and make a new life plan. 

The reader is William Hope
The abridger is Sally Marmion
The producer is Di Speirs. 

Caribou Island is the second novel from David Vann, whose groundbreaking first book, Legend of a Suicide, has become a best-seller around the world and has just won the 2010 Prix Medicis Etranger. Caribou Island is broadcast just after publication.

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Compelling story by David Vann of a marriage unravelling under the stormy skies of Alaska

David Vann's compelling story of a marriage unravelling under the stormy skies of Alaska. Read by William Hope

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