Algemene kennis

Gangbare naam: Bergen, David
Geboortedatum: 1957-01-14
Geslacht: male
Nationaliteit: Canada
Geboorteplaats: Port Edward, British Columbia, Canada
Woonplaatsen: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Port Edward, British Columbia, Canada
Niverville, Manitoba, Canada
Opleiding: Red River College, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Beroepen: High school teacher
novelist
short story writer
Organisaties: Kelvin High School, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Prijzen en onderscheidingen: John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer (1993)
CBC Literary Award (Short Story "How Can 'N' Men Share a Bottle of Vodka", 1999)
Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award (2009)
Agent: Denise Bukowski
Jackie Kaiser
Korte biografie: David Bergen was born on January 14, 1957 in Port Edward, a small fishing village in British Columbia, and later grew up in the small town of Niverville, Manitoba. He went to Bible college in British Columbia and Red River College in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he studied creative communication. He taught English and Creative Writing at Winnipeg's Kelvin High School until 2002.

Raised as a Mennonite, Bergen has noted that the tendency of the church to stifle questions and criticism affected his decision to write fiction. "Writing is a way of figuring things out," he says. "If you can't ask certain questions in church, maybe you can ask them in fiction."
His debut novel, A Year of Lesser in 1996, was a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. His 2002 novel The Case of Lena S. was a finalist for the Governor General's Award for English language fiction and won the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award. It was also a finalist for the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award, and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction.

His 2005 novel The Time in Between won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, received a coveted starred review in the Kirkus Reviews trade magazine, and was recently longlisted for the 2007 IMPAC Award. In 2008 he published his fifth novel, The Retreat, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and which won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award, and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. In 2010 he was shortlisted again for the Scotiabank Giller Prize for his sixth novel, The Matter with Morris.

He is also the author of a collection of short fiction, Sitting Opposite My Brother (1993), which was a finalist for the Manitoba Book of the Year.

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Matter With Morris door David Bergen

Family Drama

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BooksInMirror | 8 andere besprekingen | Feb 19, 2024 |

Out of Mind door David Bergen

Bergen’s absorbing and lightly plotted work of psychological fiction focuses on Lucille Black, an introspective psychiatrist in her fifties whose practice centres on psychotherapy rather than the prescribing of psychoactive-drugs. Lucille has been receiving distressing phone calls and text messages from her daughter, Libby, a medical student who, feeling uncertain about her chosen path in life, has recently travelled to Thailand, mainly because it was the cheapest place to go. It’s unclear if Libby is attempting to escape or to discover herself—perhaps both. The young woman has fallen in with a group of young people—young women, to be precise—who live on a compound in the Thai coastal city of Pattaya. Lucille initially refers to this group as a “club”, later as a “cult”, and at one point, actually invokes Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s run by a charismatic huckster called Shane, who practises some form of psychotherapy on his young female devotees. He likes the girls thin, clad in shapeless denim dresses, and their hair simply braided. Later, the reader learns that the feistier they are, the more attractive he finds them.

Ostensibly, the group’s aim is to teach English and sewing to young girls sold by their families into the sex trade for the price of a pickup truck. Libby tells her mother she’s in love with Shane. She says he loves her and he wants them to be married. Lucille believes her daughter is lost. She resolves that before travelling to the August wedding of a young male “friend” in France, she’ll first travel to Thailand to rescue Libby, wrest her from Shane’s psychological grip, or at least talk some sense into her.

Bergen’s book, a companion to his 2010 novel The Matter with Morris (which I haven’t yet read) isn’t just about a mother-daughter relationship. In Out of Mind, Lucille takes stock of her life, including her childhood and the failure of her marriage to Morris a decade before this story is set. Prior to the marital dissolution, the couple’s soldier son, Martin, had been killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, and Morris, a newspaper columnist, had gone off the rails corresponding with and then visiting a sympathetic female reader of his column and progressing to using pricey escort services. When the two divorced, Lucille, the responsible partner and the higher earner, had to hand over a small fortune to her husband, as part of the settlement—a matter she still resents.

Rarely does a reader know a character as well as she knows Lucille by the end of the book. Those who appreciate a plot-driven novel might not find this one to their liking, but Bergen’s sensitive, nuanced, skillfully unembellished writing about the complexity of human relationships and the challenge of finding balance in life will reward those who value character-driven literary fiction. I’ll admit that I did not find some aspects of the novel’s conclusion wholly satisfying. I refer here to Lucille’s fairly long and intimate conversation with a new acquaintance, which seemed too convenient to convince. Ultimately, however, a decision she makes at the end testifies to a kind of growth and acceptance of things as they are.… (meer)

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fountainoverflows | Sep 17, 2021 |

Here the Dark door David Bergen

This book of short stories was on the shortlist for the Giller Prize. I thought that the stories were expertly written. Most of the subjects were men working through difficult situations.Many of the men were caught in a life not of their own choosing. The last story or novella describes the life of a young woman who rebels against the Mennonite community that she lives in. Some of the stories show heartbreaking situations. This could have been the winner of the prize- it is that good.

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torontoc | Nov 12, 2020 |