Halibut on the Moon by David Vann
This review was published in the San Francisco Examiner
on April 14, 2019
Some books are read for insight and some for the enjoyment of a good story. Award winning author David Vann’s new novel falls in the former category. ‘Halibut on the Moon’ is a difficult story to read yet provides insight and empathy for a man who suffers from mental illness and dreams of suicide. Vann’s fictionalized account of his father’s life is raw and heartbreaking.
When the novel begins, Jim Vann, a 39 year-old dentist, is descending both literally and figuratively. He is landing in San Francisco, California on a flight from Fairbanks, Alaska. His younger brother Gary picks him up at SFO and they drive to Gary’s home in Sebastopol. Knowing of his brother’s depression, Gary has arranged for Jim to see a psychiatrist who prescribes an unnamed medicine and instructs Gary not to leave Jim alone.
The novel follows Gary and Jim as they visit their parents, Jim’s kids and his oldest friend. Part of the novel’s tension derives from how the characters fail to connect with each another. Jim believes that he has come to review the course of his life, and say goodbye before he commits suicide. While Gary believes that Jim has returned to get help and feel the love and support of family. But Jim’s family lacks the ability to understand and address Jim’s illness.
On the surface, Jim’s problems are apparent. He has two ex-wives, two confused children and a $365,000 debt to the IRS. But Jim seems less bothered by these facts than by the intense irrational thoughts that haunt his inner life. He lives in a dark tunnel that light and love rarely reach.
How he arrived in this downward spiral of mental illness is not known; no doubt a storm of factors starting with lousy luck in the genetic lottery. His parents are another unfortunate piece of the puzzle. They are remote, distant and simple. When Gary and Jim arrive at their childhood home on the shores of Clear Lake, Jim’s hostility is apparent. He says to his mother “You look old now, and you’re bigger, and you have that loose neck.” To his father, “Have you been fat that long?” No one engages as they eat lunch. His mother says grace, “Please help my boy Jim. Help guide him and comfort him and make your love clear. Help get us all through this difficult time.” Jim blurts back, “Where do I get this feeling that I’m a piece of shit?”
These family members cannot connect. Jim’s parents believe that his troubles derive from moral shortcomings not a mental illness. When Jim starts a manic rant, Gary exclaims, “All you have to do is stop.” Jim wishes he could stop, but it is not that easy. He says early in the novel, “Why does anyone think they can control what they feel?”
Carrying his gun, thinking about sex and considering suicide all comfort Jim’s troubled mind. He tells Gary of a NASA experiment when astronauts took a halibut to the moon. “They didn’t mean for it to survive. It was supposed to have one beautiful flight, is all. That’s all any of us are meant to have. None of us survive.”
David Vann’s artistic rendering of his father’s struggle must have helped to repair his own heart. The book’s dialogue captures the wild gyrations of Jim’s mind. Vann reveals the unrestrained euphoria and crushing depression that define Jim’s exhausting existence. It is generous of Vann to share this poignant and powerful story. His evocative writing helps us understand the erratic and illogical thinking that can come with mental illness. We become witnesses to a man stuck in a tunnel of pain while his helpless family cannot reach him. You many not “enjoy” ‘Halibut on the Moon’, but you will likely read it to the end and emerge from the experience with greater empathy for those among us who cannot control the machinations of their mind.