Leaving Tomorrow
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3.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the Giller Prize–winning author of the #1 bestseller The Age of Hope, a thoughtful, tender, often wry novel of growing up and falling in love
In the small Alberta town of Tomorrow, young Arthur yearns for a larger life. His father loves horses and good books, while his mother follows practicality and her faith. Bev, his rough-edged brother, chooses action over thought. Arthur lives among them—intelligent, curious, romantic and at odds with his surroundings and his religion. His one ally is his adopted cousin, the fearless Isobel. Their mutual admiration for the land, literature, all things French and each other sustains Arthur.
When Bev returns from the Vietnam War emotionally broken, relationships within the family change and tensions arise. With a secret between the brothers, Arthur leaves for Paris, where he pursues his passions for writing and women and begins to claim the life he has always wanted. But dreams and reality don’t always match, and it is only through going away that Arthur learns to appreciate the push and pull of home and love.
With his trademark elegant prose and incisive characterizations, David Bergen has created a wise and hopeful character and an emotionally powerful story of being young and finding oneself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bergen, whose novel The Time in Between won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2005, returns with a character study of a young aspiring writer. Arthur Wohlgemuht believes he is destined for greatness but feels he can never achieve it in small-town Tomorrow, Alberta. From recounting his birth in 1955 as though he remembers the event to collecting people and experiences that elevate his status, Arthur intriguingly tells his story while simultaneously annoying with self-aggrandizements. The book spans the years from Arthur's birth until his early 20s. His focus on class and finding his place in the world dominates the narrative. Stylistic excellences such as the sentence structure moving from long free flowing trains of thought when Arthur recounts his childhood to more concise sentences as he ages are evident throughout, but the narrative has a pointed lack of description and sense of place. Bergen succeeds in his consistent representation of Arthur, but Arthur's narrow and one-toned perspective of the world through complex experiences such as being directly impacted by the Vietnam War and moving from a small town to raucous Paris prevents the reader from connecting to the character and his exploration of self.
