Here the Dark: A Novella and Stories

Published March 10th 2020 by Biblioasis, Paperback 224 pages

From the streets of Danang, where a boy falls in with an American missionary, to the Canadian prairies, where an aging rancher finds himself smitten and a teenage boy’s infatuation reveals his naiveté, and a young woman in a cloistered Mennonite community is torn between faith and doubt, Here the Dark deftly renders moral complexities and asks what it means to be lost—and how, through grace, we can be found.

User Reviews

David

Rating: really liked it
It's another collection of stories shortlisted for the Giller Prize that seems an unlikely choice given the opening stories...

Distraught over the growing separation with his travelling girlfriend, guy organizes a Day Camp for tweens and falls for one of them. Followed by day drinking teacher cuckolded by his wife finds solace in "ample" coworker. Followed by grizzled cowboy in danger of losing his ranch screws rich paraplegic.

Do I really need to read about this sad parade of hand-wringing white guys?

But Bergen manages to nail the tone. There is this minor chord of entitled obliviousness that thrums in the background and the early cringey behaviour soon takes a darker turn with subsequent stories. Each unique and malevolent in their own way.

And then the titular novella about a Brethren girl questioning her faith and her place in the community. Coming to terms with her own feminist awakening and a stubborn refusal to merely submit to the ways of the patriarchal church. It feel like a stark turn from the previous stories and yet it's also faith, sex and being trapped within the narrow confines of our own histories but from a more traditional gendered lens.

Ok, maybe a bit of a stretch there - but nonetheless this collection is a polished effort with a high level of difficulty that Bergen manages to pull off.

Penny (Literary Hoarders)

Rating: really liked it
How deeply upsetting to find this collection find its way onto a prestigious literary prize's Shortlist.

At a time when female authors have been facing incredible amounts of hatred and threats online for their books, but something filled with toxic masculinity gets a pass and praise for a literary prize. Disturbing.

Darryl Suite

Rating: really liked it
If reading about toxic masculinity and/or male antiheroes isn't your thing, stay away from this short story collection. Lol. I was really into this. Damn, Bergen is a great prose writer, no denying that. He knows how to create a mood.

All of these men are dangerous, either to others or to themselves. Self-destructive is an understatement. Then the collection switches gears and ends with a great female-centric novella. Most of these stories discuss this need of wanting to be saved; our need to escape from our own self-destructive selves. Topics on faith, gender, and violence. Loved it.

Oh, and I wanted to say my favorite story is "How Can n Men Share a Bottle of Vodka?" It's about an alcoholic teacher, who uses unconventional ways of teaching math. I think my eyes grew three sizes out of my head while reading this one. It was pretty wild and unexpected.

Louise

Rating: really liked it
The novella is the strongest story in this collection of short stories, which varied between 3 and 4 stars so overall I would give this book 3.5 stars. I never know if I should round up, or round down but I don't quite feel this book as a whole is a 4.

Allison ༻hikes the bookwoods༺

Rating: really liked it
I really liked some of these short stories and the novella would be great fleshed out as a novel. Stories centred around churches that behave more like cults are always interesting.

Brittany

Rating: really liked it
I didn't connect with anything, not the characters, the writing or the imagery. It seemed like each short story had one flat female character who's only quality was based souly on physical appearance and the male characters got a trophy for loving them anyways... Overall, all the short stories were forgettable. The novella I also thought suffered from poor characters. There were moments where the author was on the cusp of saying something more and of value and then it would completely fall off.

I don't think this will make the Giller Short List to be honest and I'm glad I still have 10 others to read still which I feel will be an improvement.

Ty Stapleton

Rating: really liked it
this guy is a writer, no doubt. tells a great story and turns a phrase sweet as pie - but he’s easily the horniest author on the Giller list. every story is about sex! that’s fine but imma call him the weeknd of books.

MargaretDH

Rating: really liked it
I often feel like the books that have spoken to me in the strongest ways are often not the most popular books. Often, I feel like books that are popular are too universal, or have too broad an appeal to spark a strong and lasting connection. Of course there exceptions to this rule, but that's usually how I feel.

So this is a tough one, because I suspect this really spoke to someone out there, but it wasn't me. There's one short story I quite liked, a few that left me cold, and a novella that I found partly good and partly infuriating. I am surprised, to be honest, that this made it onto the Giller shortlist. It's not bad, it's certainly not poorly written, but none of it felt outstanding to me. Clearly, however, this did speak to the jury, and they connected it in ways that I did not!

My favourite story was the one about the widower rancher, the mute dog and the woman in the electric wheelchair. I felt like Bergen wasn't totally fair to his main character in the novella, sometimes giving and sometimes taking her agency. The other short stories were fine, but not really my deal. If you want to read the whole Giller shortlist, you'll probably end up picking this up, but I'm having a hard time thinking of who I'd recommend it to otherwise.

Beverly

Rating: really liked it
4 stars for the concluding novella, which if not a unique subject, felt true and original. The prior stories were a mixed bag and a bit too churchy for me. “Saved” is a superb story, though.

Macy

Rating: really liked it
i've heard people say this book is hemingway-esque. i agree, but that's coming from someone who kind of hates hemingway.

it's...fine. the short stories are full of manly men doing manly things and having sex with women who are described in ways that often made me cringe a little. some i really enjoyed, like "man lost"; some i could not get into at all, like "april in snow lake." i liked most of the novella but the ending was incredibly unsatisfying.

i struggled on whether to give this 2 or 3 stars and ultimately i think my view of it is a little more charitable because i read it for the same class as gil adamson's ridgerunner and was comparing it to that. i have similar problems with both of them (manly-man-centric narratives featuring problematically portrayed female characters who just exist to further the men's character development) but at least i was actually somewhat engaged by this book instead of struggling to turn the pages. i do actually quite like the writing style in some places, and the character work is compelling when it's not being overshadowed by icky tropes.

know what you're getting with this book, i guess. there's a fair bit of misogyny, toxic masculinity, fatphobia, and weird christian themes i didn't connect with, but if you can get past that (and it's 100% understandable if some people can't) it's not a bad read.

Jane Mulkewich

Rating: really liked it
Tonight on zoom, the Giller Book Club will hold a conversation with this author about this book, and I have finished reading it just in time to be part of an informed audience, although I am still digesting these stories. Bergen was nominated for the Giller for this collection; the title of the collection and of the novella "Here the Dark" captures the "dark" tone of most the stories, embodying toxic white male masculinity and violence (at worst) or casual disdain for lives of others (at best), which is perhaps part of what makes the writing provocative. The settings of the stories range from Manitoba to Honduras to Vietnam. The novella is written from the point of view of a young woman who is shunned by her restrictive faith community (the Brethern) for reading books and for exploring her own ideas of independence. She was told to pray. "She said that to pray was to ask for what was already evident. Prayer was the absence of knowledge". I made note of that quote - but it is the characters who will stay with me for a while I think.

Kerry Pickens

Rating: really liked it
David Bergen is a Canadian novelist who has published nine novels and several short story collections. His 2005 novel The Time in Between won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and he was a finalist again in 2010 and 2020. it was just the subject of some of these stories that were a bit mundane and disturbing at the same time. Mystery writers seemed to be fascinated with writing about drug dealers that live in mobile homes, and I don't find these types at all interesting. The other subject he seems to dwell on is Christian fanaticism, which loses my interest pretty quickly. I would like to read more by this author as he is very good at developing characters and keeping a tight story line, he just needs to expand his subject matter in my opinion.

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