Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} A Year of Lesser by David Bergen A Year of Lesser by David Bergen. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 656671148a361665 • Your IP : 188.246.226.140 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. David Bergen. David Bergen (born January 14, 1957) is a Canadian novelist. He has published nine novels and two collections of short stories since 1993 and is currently based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. [1] [2] His 2005 novel The Time in Between won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a finalist again in 2010 (for The Matter With Morris) and 2020 (for Here the Dark) , making the long list in 2008 (for The Retreat). [1] Contents. Life and career Bibliography Novels Short stories Awards References External links. Life and career. Bergen was born on January 14, 1957 in Port Edward, a small fishing village in British Columbia, Canada, and later grew up in the small town of Niverville, Manitoba. [3] 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. [3] Raised Mennonite, [2] 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." [3] 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 International Dublin Literary 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, which was also shortlisted for the 2012 International Dublin Literary Award. [4] 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. His most recent short story collection, Here the Dark , was published in 2020, [5] and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize [6] and the 2021 ReLit Award for short fiction. [7] Bibliography. Novels. A Year of Lesser , HarperCollins Canada, 1996 See the Child , HarperCollins Canada, 1999 The Case of Lena S. , McClelland & Stewart, 2002 The Time in Between , McClelland & Stewart, 2005 The Retreat , McClelland & Stewart, 2008 The Matter With Morris , HarperCollins Canada, 2010 The Age of Hope , HarperCollins Canada, 2012 Leaving Tomorrow , HarperCollins Canada, 2014 Stranger , HarperCollins Canada, 2016. Short stories. Sitting Opposite My Brother , Turnstone Press, 1993 Here the Dark , Stories and a Novella, Biblioasis, March, 2020. Awards. 1993 Finalist, Manitoba Book of the Year — Sitting Opposite My Brother 1996 John Hirsch Award — A Year of Lesser 1996 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award — A Year of Lesser 1999 CBC Literary Award, Short Story — How Can 'N' Men Share a Bottle of Vodka 2002 Short list, Governor General's Award — The Case of Lena S. 2002 Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award — The Case of Lena S. 2002 Finalist, McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award — The Case of Lena S. 2002 Finalist, Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction — The Case of Lena S. 2005 Giller Prize — The Time in Between 2005 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award — The Time in Between 2007 Long list, International Dublin Literary Award — The Time in Between 2008 Long list, Giller Prize — The Retreat 2008 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award — The Retreat 2008 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction — The Retreat 2010 Shortlist, Giller Prize — The Matter With Morris 2012 Shortlist, International Dublin Literary Award — The Matter with Morris 2013 The Age of Hope chosen for Canada Reads - Defended by Ron Maclean 2016 Longlist, Scotiabank Giller Prize - Stranger 2018 Matt Cohen Award 2020 Shortlist, Scotiabank Giller Prize - Here the Dark 2021 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award - Here the Dark [8] Related Research Articles. The Time in Between is a novel by Canadian author David Bergen. It deals with a man, who mysteriously returns to Vietnam, where he had been a soldier earlier in his life, followed by his children, who also go to Vietnam to search for him. The novel was the recipient of the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award in 2005. Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer, best known for her novels A Complicated Kindness (2004) and All My Puny Sorrows (2014). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for body of work. She is also a two-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Eden Victoria Lena Robinson is an Indigenous Canadian author. She is a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations. Allan Levine is a Canadian author from Winnipeg, Manitoba, known mainly for his award-winning non-fiction and historical mystery writing. Elizabeth Grace Hay is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. Sarah Klassen is a Canadian writer. She is the author of A Feast of Longing and one other short fiction collection, The Peony Season , and five books of poetry. A novel, The Wittenbergs , was published in 2013. Klassen's first volume of poetry, Journey to Yalta , was awarded the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award in 1989. Klassen is the recipient of Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry and Klassen's novel, The Wittenbergs , was awarded the Margaret McWilliams Award for popular history. Warren Cariou is a writer and associate professor of English at the University of Manitoba. Marina Endicott is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. Her novel, Good to a Fault , won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Canada and the Caribbean and was a finalist for the Giller Prize. Her next, The Little Shadows , was long-listed for the Giller and short-listed for the Governor General's Literary Award. Close to Hugh , was long-listed for the Giller Prize and named one of CBC's Best Books of 2015. Her latest, The Difference , was one of the Globe & Mail's Best Books of 2019. It will be published by W.W. Norton in the US as The Voyage of the Morning Light in June 2020. Lauren B. Davis is a Canadian writer. She is best known for her novels Our Daily Bread , which was named one of the best books of 2011 by The Globe and Mail and The Boston Globe . and The Empty Room, a semi-autobiographical novel about alcoholism. She currently lives in Princeton, New Jersey with her husband, Zurich Financial executive, Ron Davis, and their dog, Bailey. Heather O'Neill is a Canadian novelist, poet, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist, who published her debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals , in 2006. The novel was subsequently selected for the 2007 edition of Canada Reads , where it was championed by singer-songwriter John K. Samson. Lullabies won the competition. The book also won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for eight other major awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Governor General's Award and was longlisted for International Dublin Literary Award. Todd Babiak is a Canadian writer and entrepreneur living in Tasmania. Joan Thomas is a Canadian novelist and book reviewer from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Dora Dueck is a Canadian writer. She is the author of three novels and a collection of short fiction. Her second novel, This Hidden Thing , was shortlisted for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award at the 2011 Manitoba Book Awards. What You Get at Home , a collection of short stories, was shortlisted for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and the Carol Shields Winnipeg Award at the 2013 Manitoba Book Awards. It won the High Plains Book Award for Short Stories. The Malahat Review, a Canadian literary magazine, awarded its 2014 Novella Prize to her story "Mask". All That Belongs , her third novel, was published in 2019. Her stories and articles have appeared in a variety of journals and on the CBC. Patrick deWitt is a Canadian novelist and screenwriter. He was born on Vancouver Island at Sidney, British Columbia, and later lived in California and Washington state; he currently lives in Portland, Oregon. David Alexander Robertson is an Indigenous graphic novelist and writer from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Of Swampy Cree heritage, Robertson has published over 25 books across a variety of genres. His first novel, The Evolution of Alice, was published in 2014. A Year of Lesser is the first novel of Canadian author David Bergen. It was published in 1996 by HarperCollins in Canada and the United States. The novel won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award in 1996. The Retreat is a 2008 English novel of Canadian author David Bergen. It was published by McClelland & Stewart and won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award in 2009. The novel depicts the relations between and among a white woman and aboriginal men. Michael Kaan is a Canadian writer, whose debut novel The Water Beetles was published in 2017. The novel, a family saga about a young boy's experience during the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong, was based in part on Kaan's father's memoirs. Joshua Whitehead is a Canadian First Nations, two spirit poet and novelist. A Year of Lesser by David Bergen. From and To can't be the same language. That page is already in . Something went wrong. Check the webpage URL and try again. Sorry, that page did not respond in a timely manner. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Something went wrong, please try again. Try using the Translator for the Microsoft Edge extension instead. A Year of Lesser by David Bergen. From and To can't be the same language. That page is already in . Something went wrong. Check the webpage URL and try again. Sorry, that page did not respond in a timely manner. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Sorry, that page doesn't exist or is preventing translations. Something went wrong, please try again. Try using the Translator for the Microsoft Edge extension instead. BERGEN, David 1957- ADDRESSES: Agent— c/o Author Mail, HarperCollins, 10 East 53rd St., 7th Fl., New York, NY 10022-5299. CAREER: Fiction writer. WRITINGS: Sitting Opposite My Brother (short stories), Turnstone (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada), 1994. A Year of Lesser, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996. See the Child, HarperFlamingo Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1999, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2002. The Case of Lena S, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2002. Contributor to several editions of The Journey Prize Anthology (Canada). SIDELIGHTS: "David Bergen's stories are identifiably, disturbingly, marked 'Bergen,'" wrote P. J. Gerbrecht in a review of Sitting Opposite My Brother in Canadian Literature. But John Oughton, reviewing the same volume for Books in Canada, aligned Bergen with other Manitoban writers who shared a Mennonite heritage, specifically Di Brandt and Patrick Friesen. Thus achieving both individuality and communality, Bergen, at his best, Oughton remarked, "plays skillfully on many levels." The stories in Bergen's first book, Sitting Opposite My Brother, deal with ordinary realistic problems of love and marriage, sibling relationships, alcoholism, mental illness, and religious faith and doubt. Many of them feature a set of recurring family members, including Timothy, a Mennonite missionary, and Thomas, his doubting brother, who serves frequently as narrator. Blending careful observation with occasional philosophic flights, Bergen uses guilt-ridden first-person narrators to portray a dark vision of life in which, according to Pat Bolger in Canadian Materials, "religion . . . is a source of pain rather than comfort, and families are unhappy or corrupt." Both the title story and the story "Where You're From" in Sitting Opposite My Brother are narrated by Thomas; other stories cited favorably by Bolger were "The Bottom of the Glass," which concerns a drowned child and its father; "Cousins," a tale about a sexual relationship between cousins; "La Rue Prevette," which depicts three dysfunctional generations in a family; and the very short "The Vote," which ironically portrays a congregation's process of selecting a pastor. In "The Translator," Timothy marries, or at least appears to have married, a Guyanese woman who has emigrated to North America. Gerbrecht analyzed "The Translator" as an example of the alienation that she found in many of Bergen's stories, particularly in those dealing with the brothers Timothy and Thomas; she speculated that Bergen's Mennonite relatives and friends would not approve of his often-ironic view of that culture. Oughton perceived in Bergen's stories "a common tone—a sense of life as painful and random, yet holding moments of tenderness and beauty." Commenting on his own work—and perhaps also on his working method—in a press release quoted by Oughton, Bergen observed that "only the minute detail will save these characters." Oughton, despite noting some lapses of craftsmanship in the stories, particularly in transitions, asserted, "[Bergen's] work is worth following, both for the complexity and realism of his characters and for the pleasures of lines like, 'He was nothing to her, and nothing was what she was looking for.'" Bergen's first novel, A Year of Lesser, was published by HarperCollins in 1996. It describes a year in the life of one Johnny Fehr, who volunteers at a teen center run by a man named Lesser. Fehr is unhappily married to alcoholic Charlene and is having an affair with the cynical widow Lorraine. Library Journal reviewer David A. Beron enjoyed the novel's descriptions, which he called "distinctive," more than its plot and characterizations, claiming that weaknesses in the latter two areas prevented him from feeling deeply about the characters and events. See the Child, published in 1999, is a story of grief and the search for healing, guilt and attempted absolution, disintegrating family relationships and the process of restoring broken ties. It begins early one morning when small town businessman Paul Unger is roused by the news that his estranged teenaged son, Stephen, has been found dead. Unable to cope with the resulting depression and guilt, Unger withdraws from his wife and adult daughter to his remote farm, where he pours his energies into his longtime interest of bee keeping. Nicole, Stephen's promiscuous girlfriend, arrives at the farm with two-year-old Sky, whom she says is Stephen's son. Unger turns to them to assuage his pain, despite the talk his devotion to this new "family" causes among his old family and in his small town. Bergen employs flashbacks to depict Unger's troubled relationship with Stephen and the events that led to his death. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called See the Child a "plaintive, deeply moving novel," praising Bergen's concise, revealing writing, and particularly noting the strong portrayals of secondary characters. "This authenticity deepens the novel's perspective, allowing this compassionate tale of mourning to be told with graceful honesty," the reviewer reflected. Gillian Engberg, writing in Booklist, noted the questions the book raises concerning how one should live and take care of others and oneself. She found it "an uneven whole of beautiful parts." The parts she considered best, "written in Bergen's tender, unflinching, precise, language . . . capture private revelations between people." A Kirkus Reviews contributor regarded it to be "emotionally compelling," and concluded, "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." BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: PERIODICALS. Booklist, May 15, 2002, Gillian Engberg, review of See the Child, p. 1573. Books in Canada, February, 1994, review of Sitting Opposite My Brother, p. 32; October, 1996, review of A Year of Lesser, p. 40. Canadian Literature, spring, 1996, review of Sitting Opposite My Brother, pp. 144-146; summer, 1998, review of A Year of Lesser, pp. 138- 139; winter, 2000, review of See the Child, pp. 177-178. Canadian Materials, January, 1994, review of Sitting Opposite My Brother, p. 15. Globe and Mail, March 27, 1999, review of See the Child, p. D16. Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 1997, review of A Year of Lesser, p. 4; March 15, 2002, review of See the Child, p. 356. Library Journal, February 1, 1997, review of A Year of Lesser, p. 104. New York Times Book Review, December 7, 1994, review of A Year of Lesser, p. 64; April 6, 1997, review of A Year of Lesser, p. 29; June 1, 1997, review of A Year of Lesser, p. 37. Publishers Weekly, April 8, 2002, review of See the Child, p. 203. Quill & Quire, April, 1999, review of See the Child, pp. 26-27.* A Year of Lesser. A feed supply salesman whose history extends only as far as he can remember, Johnny longs for a spiritual salvation, but finds beauty and truth in the soft, warm flesh of the women he loves. Charlene's final, fiery truth lies in her inability to come to terms with Johnny's earthly morality. An extraordinarily talented new author, Bergen achieves a finely tuned balance in his work: his tone is realistic, shotwith ironic insight, replete with astonishing, but seemingly casually placed universal truths, seamlessly woven into an absorbing story of people struggling with their souls in a small prairie town.