Sitting Opposite My Brother

Boyd Holmes is a librarian in Toronto.

Irreparable loss and family strife are the main themes of this
collection of eleven short stories, four of which have also appeared in
both Prairie Fire and The Journey Prize Anthology series. Bergen’s
writing is often affected and pretentious: “She lay on top of me and
made love to me. I remember it that way. She watched my eyes, pulled at
my ears, laughed and told me I had beautiful feet. She told me I smelled
like a goat and at some point in there I felt that we were alike, that
we had suffered equally, we were mortal, we would both live some more
and then die.” Even more embarrassing are Bergen’s attempts at
rhetorical flourishes: “Then I leaned forward and began to whisper in
Bea’s sleeping ear. ‘Dream a dream,’ I said. ‘Dream that my
brother’s ears are growing and that with them he learns to fly. Dream
that he takes off from this earthly vale and that he leaves us and
ascends to heaven where he’s always wanted to go. Dream that dream,’
I said.” Bergen does, however, occasionally craft lucid prose,
particularly in “The Fall.” The result of these variations in
quality is a book that is not bad, but not good either.