Books

Reviewed by Clark Sheldon

The Time in Between
By David Bergen
McClelland & Stewart
2005

David Bergen is a Winnipeg writer in two senses: he lives in Winnipeg and he also sets his novels here. For the The Time in Between, which is his fifth book and is short listed for the 2005 Giller Prize, Bergen departs from this pattern by placing much of the action in Vietnam.

The book begins with a brother and sister in a hotel room in Danang. They’ve come looking for their father, Charles Boatman, a veteran who returned to Vietnam 30 years after the war. Really, though, much of him never left. He wakes at night with flashbacks, drags his children into the cellar and makes them stay through the night where he can keep them safe from the enemy.

From the outset of the book, Charles is a figure on the edge, living in a refurbished caboose on a mountain near Abbotsford, B.C. He finds some comfort in his children and his few neighbours, but he is always at odds with his world. When his children no longer need him, he returns to Vietnam for answers, to end his dreams and quiet his conscience. When he disappears, two of his children travel there to find him.

Yet the book is not merely a mystery; it is not simply about finding a father lost in Vietnam a month earlier. It is about finding the father that went missing in Vietnam 30 years before. Much of the novel is told through the eldest child’s eyes, Ada, who stitches together her father from the clues left behind; it is clear she can’t find herself until she finds him. She has come to Vietnam for her father, but has come as much for answers about herself. The Time in Between is about the inheritance children receive from broken parents; the legacy left by history.

The Time in Between is not only about a personal quest for redemption, either. While it is not a “war novel,” the book does discuss the Vietnam War. Bergen’s treatment is something unique. He addresses the lingering damage of the war without an overt political agenda or cloying sentimentality. We hear of Charles’ wartime experiences in graphic detail, but so too do we hear the war stories of the Vietnamese people Ada encounters.

The story of the struggling Boatman family, alone, makes this novel worth reading; the mingling of their story with the difficulties of Vietnam makes it sublime. At times tragic, it is never heavy. Bergen dances along the darkness, but never slogs through it. His simple and intimate prose is nonetheless profound, punctuated by short, crisp sentences that hint at multiple meanings. Though there are a couple of places where the plot moves with a faintly audible clunk, his masterful descriptions of setting, sights, sounds and smells more than compensate.

This is Bergen at his best; he is no longer simply a “Winnipeg writer.” With The Time in Between, he moves to stand among the ranks of authors who deserve international acclaim.