THE BOOK THIEF - SECOND HAND

In Canadian short-story writer Bonnie Burnard's deeply moving novel, we meet the Chambers family: Bill and Sylvia and their three children, an ordinary family from Ontario. Beginning in 1949, we follow the Chambers for the next fifty years through the many joys and disappointments of their lives: a childhood accident, a tragic illness ending in death, and a remarriage for Bill. Some of the children choose a traditional route, marrying and having children of their own. One forges her own very new path. The clan expands and changes; marriages fail and careers bloom. But despite the heart-aches and difficulties each member of the family faces, there is never a lack of love to be found. With writing so clear and crisp it rings with honesty and grace, Burnard's characters work their way under your skin and into your heart-an auspicious debut.

In search of love, absolution, or forgiveness, Charles Boatman leaves the Fraser Valley of British Columbia and returns mysteriously to Vietnam, the country where he fought twenty-nine years earlier as a young, reluctant soldier. But his new encounters seem irreconcilable with his memories.

When he disappears, his daughter Ada, and her brother, Jon, travel to Vietnam, to the streets of Danang and beyond, to search for him. Their quest takes them into the heart of a country that is at once incomprehensible, impassive, and beautiful. Chasing her father’s shadow for weeks, following slim leads, Ada feels increasingly hopeless. Yet while Jon slips into the urban nightlife to avoid what he most fears, Ada finds herself growing closer to her missing father — and strong enough to forgive him and bear the heartbreaking truth of his long-kept secret.

Bergen’s marvellously drawn characters include Lieutenant Dat, the police officer who tries to seduce Ada by withholding information; the boy Yen, an orphan, who follows Ada and claims to be her guide; Jack Gouds, an American expatriate and self-styled missionary; his strong-willed and unhappy wife, Elaine, whose desperate encounters with Charles in the days before his disappearance will always haunt her; and Hoang Vu, the artist and philosopher who will teach Ada about the complexity of love and betrayal. We also come to learn about the reclusive author Dang Tho, whose famous wartime novel pulls at Charles in ways he can’t explain.

Moving between father and daughter, the present and the past, The Time in Between is a luminous, unforgettable novel about one family, two cultures, and a profound emotional journey in search of elusive answers.

Heart of Darkness

Few literary works have achieved the sustained, unflinching pessimism of Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad's haunting tale of one man's journey into the African subcontinent. One new novel that can justly make that claim is The Catastrophist, by the talented Irish writer/activist Ronan Bennett. Here, Conrad's classic tale is transmogrified by a century of irony, Westernization, and a tip of the hat to Graham Greene and John le Carré. Benett's Marlow is James Gillespie, an Irish historian turned novelist who travels to the Congo in 1959. Set against the death throes of the age of imperialism, the new nation's violent struggle for independence from Belgium provides ample opportunity for Gillespie to explore the dark territory of political and emotional engagement.

Gillespie's Kurtz, the figure who draws him to the Congo and whose maddening attachment to the place both fascinates and repulses him, is Inès, a fiery Italian journalist, who pens fiercely pro-Congolese articles for a radical newspaper. Inès and Gillespie met in London at the house of Gillespie's publisher, and soon after, were heading to Ireland for a romantic getaway. Inès was smitten instantly ("I am already loving you" she whispers as they first make love), but Gillespie, considerably less headstrong, was slower to recognize his feelings. Following Inès to Léopoldville (Kinshasa), the Congolese capital, was his emotional plunge, his gesture toward commitment. But soon after his arrival, Gillespie realizes that he has been displaced from Inès's attentions by her devotion to Patrice Lumumba, the charismatic Congolese independence leader. Gillespie, on the other hand, is incapable of viewing the disorganized independence movement as anything more than an unfortunate farce; nor does he sympathize with the Belgians in Léopoldville, who live in cloistered luxury, walled off from the cité indigène -- "where the blacks live" -- by well-patrolled walls and their own willful obliviousness.