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    David Bergen Two-Book Bundle: The Matter with Morris and The Age of Hope
    Unavailable
    David Bergen Two-Book Bundle: The Matter with Morris and The Age of Hope
    Unavailable
    David Bergen Two-Book Bundle: The Matter with Morris and The Age of Hope
    Ebook543 pages9 hours

    David Bergen Two-Book Bundle: The Matter with Morris and The Age of Hope

    By David Bergen

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this ebook

    When Morris Schutt, a prominent newspaper columnist, surveys his life over the past year, he sees disaster everywhere. His son has just been killed in Afghanistan and his newspaper has put him on indefinite leave; his psychiatrist wife, Lucille, seems headed for the door; he is strongly attracted to Ursula, the wife of a dairy farmer from Minnesota; and his daughter appears to be having an affair with one of her professors. The Matter with Morris is an unforgettable story with a vitality, charm and intelligence all its own.

    Born in 1930 in a small town outside Winnipeg, beautiful Hope Koop appears destined to have a conventional life. Church, marriage to a steady young man, children—her fortunes are already laid out for her, as are the shiny modern appliances in her new home. All she has to do is stay with Roy, who loves her. But as the decades unfold, what seems to be a safe, predictable existence overwhelms Hope. Where—among the demands of her children, the expectations of her husband and the challenges of her best friend, Emily, who has just read The Feminine Mystique—is there room for her? And just who is she anyway? A wife, a mother, a woman whose life is somehow unrealized? The Age of Hope spans some fifty years of Hope Koop’s life in the second half of the 20th century, from traditionalism to feminism and beyond. David Bergen has created an indelible portrait of a seemingly ordinary woman who struggles to accept herself as she is, and in so doing becomes unique.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 7, 2014
    ISBN9781443440394
    Unavailable
    David Bergen Two-Book Bundle: The Matter with Morris and The Age of Hope
    Author

    David Bergen

    DAVID BERGEN is an award-winning author of eight previous novels and a collection of short stories. Among his acclaimed works are The Time in Between, which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize; The Matter with Morris, which was a finalist for the Giller Prize, the winner of the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, and a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; The Age of Hope which was a #1 bestseller and a finalist for Canada Reads; and Stranger, which was a finalist for the Giller Prize. Bergen lives in Winnipeg.

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    Reviews for David Bergen Two-Book Bundle

    3.5/5

    29 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I love a book where I can luxuiate in the writing and come to care about the characters. The story was compelling--a man about my own age, coming to terms with the death of his son and the arch of his life.
    • 4/5
      This is the story of a middle-aged man dealing with the death of his son -- to be more accurate, he is not dealing with it. Instead, he is preoccupied with himself: searching for a connection with paid escorts and pen-pals; searching for knowledge by reading Cicero, Plato and others; searching for escape by withdrawing from his work, his marriage and the world.Morris Schutt is a well drawn, complicated character. Author David Bergen paints a deep and vivid picture of this character -- Morris was so real to me. As we examine Morris's life along with him, we see what grief can do in middle age. Extremely well written.
    • 3/5
      Renown columnist Morris Schutt's life seems to be unravelling after the death of his son, Martin, in Afghanistan. Suffering the guilt of a father who feels he didn't do enough to discourage his boy from enlisting, he has stopped writing, separated from his wife, Lucille, and pulled away from the rest of his family. He pays for sex and carries on with a long-distance liaison with a woman he's never met. Seeking a kind of demented independence, he stops visiting his therapist, cashes in his investments, and stashes his life savings in a safe in his apartment. Morris's eccentricities are endearing up to a point, but after a while the reader loses patience with his unremitting anguish and his often childish and impulsive behaviour. (It's starting to seem a bit easy for novelists to elicit sympathy for a character by having them lose a child in Iraq or Afghanistan.) There are some true comic moments, and the book is--for all its faults--intensely readable. But one comes away from The Matter with Morris feeling that maybe this is one of David Bergen's lesser works. Shortlisted for the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
    • 4/5
      Morris Schutt, husband, father, and successful journalist, is caught in the crosshairs of mid-life transition and inconceivable grief at the loss of his only son, Martin, killed in Afghanistan. His marriage, unable to withstand the loss of a child, unravels, and Morris is unhinged. He seeks solace, but finds none, in assorted relationships with women, some of whom he pays for. He knowingly uses the armour of an expensive car and fine clothes to conceal his grief and his turmoil. Ultimately, Morris finds his way back to his life; his estranged family and a doctor he comes to love show him the way.My difficulty with Morris is that for nearly the first half of the novel, I did not like him; and because I did not like him, I was indifferent toward him. It is not that I was without compassion for his trouble: his unimaginable heartache and outrageous response to mid-life. I just didn’t like him. Then suddenly and unexpectedly, Morris acknowledged and unleashed his grief, oceans of it, to Hasim, an unsuspecting Toronto cab driver. And the human connect between the two put Morris into a different focus for me; he became a person I could relate to, and I needed to read on. I like that The Matter with Morris is current, and that author David Bergen is not afraid to ask thought-provoking questions about Canada’s prolonged presence in Afghanistan -- even if, in so doing, Morris hilariously attracts the attention of CSIS! I also like that Bergen is in full control of his writing. He is clear, concise, confident, and has no need to impress with overwrought or overwritten. And I like that out of unspeakable loss, optimism emerges.Rating/Recommendation: The Matter with Morris is hard to rate because I was lukewarm for so much of it. Based strictly on storyline, I would probably rate it a bit lower than 3.5 stars, but I think there is considerable literary value here. I’m also hesitant about a recommendation (that lukewarm-ness again), but I think for readers who follow Canadian literary awards; and for those grieving from, or otherwise affected by, the waste of our contemporary wars.“I saw a doctor after Martin died. I went to his office and I told him about myself. I was trying to understand my terrible sadness, and no matter how much I talked about Martin, I couldn’t retrieve him. He was gone.” (90)
    • 2/5
      The book can best be summed up with the following quote from page 113:"I'm looking at myself," Morris said. "It's just not very pretty. I'd be way more content if I didn't always have to take myself with me wherever I go. I'm walking around in a fog, with my hands out, feeling blindly. I stand outside of the action, watching, all alone. I am alone."Yup. That is pretty much it in a nutshell. I tried but just could not get into this book. The plot of the story - Morris has hit a personal crisis at 51 years of age with the sudden death by friendly fire of his son Martin while serving in Afghanistan, separating from his wife and having a difficult time connecting with his family and work life - had potential. Potential for an interesting story. Unfortunately, that is not what I encountered here. Morris gives up on professional psychiatrists to seek guidance from the philosophical works of Plato, Socrates and Saul Bellow's Herzog. The book is littered with quotes from these writers. Morris also exhibits a near fascination with all things Jewish, and admits to wishing he was Jewish even though he is of Russian Mennonite background, because he "imagined that this might make him a more interesting person". For me, this story was nothing more than 254 pages of whining and postulating, presented in such a superficial manner that I felt I might as well have been staring at a store front mannequin for all the feeling and emotion that the story was communicating to me. At the 100 page mark, I had come close to abandoning this one. While the story did improve towards the end, I really have to say that overall it left me feeling flat and in no hurry to rush out and pick up another one of Bergen's novels.