The Time in Between

Sometimes, after a trip, I read something that takes me back to the country that I've been. I'm sure that it's mostly a coincidence, but it still feels special, like the author and I have done the same travelling, felt the same spirit of the place. For instance, I read Adventure of Kavalier and Clay--a book largely set in New York and Prague--after a trip to Prague that started in New York. This time, the book was David Bergen's The Time in Between. Although set mostly in Vietnam and Interior British Columbia, whereas I travelled from Toronto to Thailand, the book describes the cultural journey from Canada to South East Asia in a way that I related instantly to.

"The Time in Between" is about an American, Charles Boatman, who fought in Vietnam and in many ways never left. He lives in an isolated town in BC and seems to have settled down, but suddenly picks up, goes back to Vietnam, and then vanishes. Two of his children, Ada and Jon, travel there to find him. Told from the alternating perspectives of Ada and Charles, the novel traces Charles' journey back to the places that haunt him, and his children's struggle to find and understand. Along the way they meet a missionary family on their own journey, an alcoholic artist who befriends Ada, and Yen, a boy who can find anything.

I got this book courtesy of the good people at McClelland & Stewart (ie., Amanda) as part of a reading club that provides advance copies of soon to be published books (It's coming out in August) in return for reading it and writing a couple hundred words about it. Since I have to write about it anyway, I'd thought I'd do it here.

David Bergen is the author of "The Case of Lena S.", a novel I read a few months ago which won or almost won a number of major Canadian literary awards. The Case of... was a beautiful little book about a teenager and his relationship with Lena, a troubled and poetic girl who eventually ends up committing suicide. It reminded me of The Virgin Suicides in its vaguely surrealistic tone and haunting atmosphere. So I came to "The Time In Between" with high expectations.

I was not disappointed. The dream-like tone was, if anything, stronger here. Powerful images arise out of the sparse language. Details move in and out of focus. Characters are pulled by forces that they do not control and make choices that are only partially understood. It is that sense of hyperreality, that sensation of being lost in a foreign culture in a foreign place that Bergen captures so well. He brings to life the differences between residents and tourists and travellers, all observing each other with slight distrust and unease, unsure of their place.

Again, this book closes with a suicide. But, unlike in The Case of.., it didn't leave me sad, rather left me with a very powerful feeling of being unsatisfied. I felt disconcerted and I think I was meant to feel that way. The Vietnam of Charles Boatman, the Vietnam of war and destruction, never resonated for me, but the modern Vietnam and the feeling of journeying was all too familar.