SEE THE CHILD

A keen sensitivity to the frailty of the physical body—and to the inescapable fact of mortality—subtly enriches this emotionally compelling tale by the Winnipeg author (A Year of Lesser, 1997, etc.).

In the powerful opening sequence, Paul Unger, a middle-aged furniture-store owner living in suburban comfort in the Manitoba town of Furst, receives an early morning visit from a constable who informs him that his teenaged son Stephen has been found dead in a neighboring farmer’s field. Stricken by grief and guilt (the reason for which is soon revealed), Unger goes through the motions of celebrating his daughter’s wedding, then leaves his wife Lise and retreats to his remote northern “bee farm”—and to the calming influence of the natural world’s dependably repetitive rhythms and rituals. He’s joined thereafter by Stephen’s girlfriend Nicole and the two-year-old boy, named Sky, whom she claims is Unger’s grandson. Bergen presents the process of Unger’s healing and the actions preceding it in efficient piecemeal fashion, circling around the central fact of Stephen’s death, moving back and forth in time, echoing the circumstances of Unger’s loss and the several ways in which it changes him. This moving story avoids monotony because its characters are drawn with meticulous care: the wanton Nicole impresses with her tough-minded determination to grasp a better life; Sky is quite charmingly portrayed; and pragmatic Lise, seeking elsewhere the intimacy her husband can no longer give her, is a thoroughly believable “strong woman” who has learned how to conceal her weaknesses. Numerous flashback sequences build an overwhelming impression of irresolvable distance and conflict (heated conversations between Unger and the rebellious Stephen are particularly frank and searing), and the novel succeeds brilliantly in showing how people who believe they’re solving problems and healing wounds are instead helplessly drifting away from one another.

Mature and engrossing fiction, from one of Canada’s best new writers.