The Retreat

The Retreat is a serious work by a deft, mature writer. Bergen draws together several storylines, rendered in finely observed detail. The prose is studied, lean, beautifully crafted; the technique is strong but unobtrusive; the structure is impeccable. The ending, though readily predicted, is abrupt and brutal; it is also moving and tragic. And Bergen is sufficiently self-assured in his craft not to wrap up all the loose threads of the subplots neatly at the conclusion.

Bergen says a great deal about the present moment by looking back to the recent past. The major events of the novel are set in the summer of 1974; this setting permits us a comfortable viewing distance for the author's cool critique of race relations, sex and gender, show more self-indulgence, materialism, and various forms of bias and bigotry. No-one escapes untarnished.

This was not a book I could rush through; the seriousness of the treatment demanded my attention and my time. Still, I found the novel hard going at times: the characters I wanted to like are sometimes difficult to like, and some of the dislikeable characters are thoroughly repellant. And some of the description is almost too detailed; there are some details I would rather not know.

Overall, this is dense, sophisticated novel that should reward re-reading. show less

This new novel from David Bergen has just been released from Random House Canada.

The book opens in Kenora, Ontario in 1973. Raymond Seymour, a young native man, has just been dropped off and left to die on a remote island by a local cop. His crime? Dating the white cop's niece.

The Byrd family arrives in the summer of 1974 to stay at the Retreat, which is just outside Kenora as well. It's leader is the self styled 'Doctor'. He promotes the Retreat as a spiritual and practical escape for the summer. But to the reader his motives seem to have a darker side.

" Take a group of people and plunk them down in a village, a village that is created from scratch, and make those people live together. What happens? That's what interests me."

Mrs. Byrd show more sees this Retreat as her salvation from her unhappy life. Her husband Lewis loves his wife and will go along with whatever she wants. Their four children - Lizzy, the oldest, her brothers William and Everett and the the youngest boy Fish, aren't thrilled to be there.

The Retreat is also populated with other guests, all seeking or hiding from something.1974 is also the year of the Ojibway occupation of Anicinabe Park in Kenora.

Lizzy crosses paths with Raymond Seymour, who escaped from the island and now delivers fresh game to the Retreat. They begin a relationship.

What follows is a haunting, unsettling story of lives, wants, needs and undercurrents never quite brought to the surface. The clash of cultures and beliefs fuel the fire.

Bergen's phrasing and language are beautiful. I often had to stop and savour a phrase.

"He was moving his crooked fingers, as if attempting to pick up some slippery idea up off the floor."

I felt as if I was watching a train wreck. You don't want to see the destruction but feel compelled to witness it. As the novel hurtles towards it's inevitable end, I could not put it down. I was thinking about The Retreat long after I turned the final page.

Bergen is a previous winner of the Giller Prize for his last novel, The Time in Between. show less

Reading The Retreat by David Bergen was good for me, in the way experiences that provoke and make you uncomfortable can be good for you.

But it was hard going.

Even at the outset, the reader is aware that the story will end in tragedy (and not just because it says so on the dust jacket). From the very first page, the sense of foreboding is almost oppressive. And on several occasions, I had to put it down and take a few deep breaths, so intense was my discomfort.

From the book's jacket:

" In 1973, outside of Kenora, Ontario, Raymond Seymour, an eighteen-year-old Ojibway boy, is taken by a local policeman to a remote island and left for dead.

A year later, the Byrd family arrives in Kenora. They have come to stay at “the Retreat,” a show more commune run by the self-styled guru Doctor Amos. The Doctor is an enigmatic man who spouts bewildering truisms, and who bathes naked every morning in the pond at the edge of the Retreat while young Everett Byrd watches from the bushes. Lizzy, the eldest of the Byrd children, cares for her younger brothers Fish and William, and longs for what she cannot find at the Retreat. When Lizzy meets Raymond, everything changes, and Lizzy comes to understand the real difference between Raymond’s world and her own. A tragedy and a love story, the novel moves towards a conclusion that is both astonishing and heartbreaking.

Set during the summer of the Ojibway occupation of Anicinabe Park in Kenora, The Retreat is a finely nuanced, deeply felt novel that tells the story of the complicated love between a white girl and a native boy, and of a family on the verge of splintering forever. It is also a story of the bond between two brothers who were separated in childhood, and whose lives and fates intertwine ten years later."

The book is beautifully written, filled with complex, believable, interesting and unhappy characters. Woven throughout are the twin themes of betrayal and existence (there are multiple references to the way other characters treat Raymond as though he is invisible and his own need to "verify his own existence."

I most affected by the scenes involving Raymond and I found myself becoming almost frantic as I read about his attempts at survival after being abandoned on the island, as the snow begins to fall:

"He scraped together some moss and laid it down in the hole, and then he curled up in the shallow dip and covered himself up with more moss. He was shaking severely. He pressed his hands between his thighs and blew warm breath down the inside of his jacket...In the grey light he finally started a fire...he warmed his hands and feet and bent towards the flames like a requester who sees the possibility of salvation but is too abject too cry out."

I found Bergen's description here to be quite vivid and made all the more poignant by the fact that Canada has a shameful history of this sort of occurrence and that more than one such instance has ended in tragedy.

I can't say that I enjoyed The Retreat. It did however, move me profoundly. I will remember it longer than many books I have enjoyed and read with much more ease.

Cross-posted to Not Just About Cancer (http://notjustaboutcancer.blogspot.com). show less

Quick take: A dense, visceral read. A book to feel your way through, as well as read.

David Bergen's The Retreat offers a very particular sense of time and place (Kanata, Ontario, 1970s), evoking a thrill of recognition and stirring memories of my own childhood summers spent idly by the lake. This delight is tempered, however, by Bergen's honest and unflinching depiction of racism and harm visited upon the First Nations — a problem both historic and ongoing.

Bergen's writing often reads like poetry moreso than prose (I loved lines like: "her spine resembled a column of pebbles laid out in perfect symmetry..."). As this was my first encounter with Bergen's work, I look forward to picking up his Giller Prize-winning effort, The Time in show more Between next.

In the meantime, The Retreat deserves a second and indeed a third reading. It's a dense book and difficult at times, but the rewards are well worth the effort, particularly if you prefer your love stories marked for tragedy rather than happily ever after. It's one to return to again and again for its nuances, its poetry, and above all, to enjoy a moving story well-told. show less

Wow.

The Retreat is the story of Ray Seymour, an Ojibway from somewhere near Kenora, Ontario. He has a, for him, disastrous relationship with school mate Alice Hart, whose white family object. Alice's police-officer uncle is (and remains) bent on revenge against Raymond.

It is also the story of Lizzy Byrd. Her mother, suffering from depression, decides the family should spent the summer at "The Retreat", near Kenora. Lizzy is the oldest child, and has largely assumed the role of raising her younger brothers. When she meets Ray, her 17-year-old self emerges from her responsible "oldest child" self as she comes into contact with love, racism and cultural clashes for the first time in her life.

I know some reviewers say this is a show more character-driven novel. I think the balance between character and plot was perfectly maintained. The writing is poetic, the characters extremely well drawn, and the story flows better for the depth with which the author has drawn the characters.

Nearly perfect. show less

This book was not what I was expecting at all. After a rough start (I couldn’t get into the story, which hit too close to home for me) the Retreat quickly picks up and I was quickly enmeshed in this story.

The Retreat opens up with a theme we see in many romances – the girl next door and the boy from the wrong side of the tracks. In this case, the girl is the chief of police’s niece and the boy is Aboriginal (Native American). Despite a few attempts by the girl’s family to break them up, the girl keeps coming back for more, but the boy pays the price. The chief of police takes this boy, Raymond out for a boat trip, and only one person comes back…

The story picks up with Lizzy Byrd, a 17 year old girl from Calgary on a trip to show more the Retreat with her family. Lizzy’s mother went into a depression after the birth of her last child and now 4 years later, she’s found someone who inspires her – the Doctor, a man who “runs” the Retreat for 2 months during the summer in Lake of the Woods.

Lizzy is an interesting character. She’s caught between two worlds – she’s practically raised her younger siblings, so in that aspect she’s a woman…but she also is still that young girl who likes boys and wants to do whatever she wants. She’s also very observant, and she notices the way the adults are acting around her – the Doctor has a hands on healing approach.

When Lizzy begins a relationship with one of the locals – things take an interesting turn and Lizzy gets caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous rivalry.

As I said before, the Retreat was engrossing. The way all the characters came together, the way events played out, it worked. I like how Bergen worked with the racial tension between the Aboriginal locals and their fighting to preserve some land with the “mainstream” Kenora society. It creates a backdrop for Lizzy’s story that is just oozing tension and strife.

The Retreat is my first book by David Bergen and it won’t be my last. B+ show less

Bergman's "The Retreat" is a wonderfully believable story set in the area of Kenora, Ontario Canada, during the time of the occupation of Anicanabe park, in the early 1970's.

As cultures and generations clash, the reader finds themselves awash with emotional tension. Bergman balances emotions so delicately in this novel, that the reader constantly feels conflicted. Hoping for the beast, but dreading the worst. Love for family against hatred for corrupt authority figures. The sweetness of young romance, with the bitterness of that which is doomed before it starts. This book commands you to keep turning pages into the wee hours.

A fine novel by a former Giller Prize winner, proving that Bergman is a force to be reckoned with on the Canadian show more literary scene, and likely will be for some time to come.

This book courtesy of Random House - McClelland & Stewart/Library Thing

This Review can also be seen on my blog at:
http://lastpageturned.blogspot.com/2008/10/retreat-david-bergman.html show less