Review: The Age of Hope

The Age of Hope by David Bergen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Yes, once again, I've read a book that I love! I'm either on a quite a streak of reading only good books, or I've completely lost any standard! (Maybe a little from column A and a little from column B)

But I loved The Age of Hope. I've been trying to recall the last time I read a novel written my a man who explored the emotional landscape of a woman as thoroughly as David Bergen has in this novel and I cannot come up anything. Not that there aren't any, I admittedly have a poor memory.

Hope is a woman born in 1930, in a small town near Winnepeg, Manitoba, Canada. So, this is a novel about my mother (who was born in 1929 in Quebec) and her generation. Hope marries Roy, a man driven by ambition: with his expanding car dealerships he easily provides for his growing family through the nineteen-seventies. Hope and Roy Koop and their four kids live well and Hope's family is as happy as they can be.

Except for Hope.

Mr. Bergen offers many reasons why Hope is unhappy in her humdrum life: for one thing, she is nothing like her recently emancipated girlfriend, a woman who gets caught up in the wild seventies movements, experimenting with pop psychology, drugs, and sex.

Although The Age of Hope focuses exclusively on Hope's life, Hope doesn't have lots of exciting experiences. She just goes along and lives her life; she cares for her family, whom she usually loves, but sometimes hates, and at other times cannot fathom why she should care about them.

Hope gets depressed when she learns that she is pregnant with her fourth child and she ends up receiving electro-shock therapy for her depression. One result of the shocks, besides bringing her back to an even keel psychologically, is that she can no longer bring herself to cry about anything.

Don't get me wrong, lots of things happen in this narrative: women get abortions, people lie, they cheat on their spouses during wife-swapping key parties, they run away from their families... but none of these things happen to Hope.

Yet, I offer a couple reasons as to why I love this novel: the first is that David Bergen (and his editors) let the characters shrug. A lot! I love it! As a writer, I love the shrug, it so easily and realistically conveys so many indeterminate emotions.

The other reason I love The Age of Hope is that, like a Seinfeld episode, nothing happens to Hope, yet she has an interesting life and a life well worth reading about. The reason is that Mr Bergen lets her breathe. He takes the time needed to document life in rural Manitoba and the rest of the world, to examine the sixties, seventies, and eighties eras, and to explore Hope's inner life as she goes from a nursing student to an elderly woman.

I highly recommend this novel to anyone who has never read David Bergen. And when you're done reading this one, read The Time in Between.



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