The Time in Between

by David Bergen

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0771011393
• ISBN13: 9780771011399
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Aptly read aloud by "Battlestar Galactica" actor Michael Hogan

Winner of the 2005 Scotiabank Giller prize, The Time in Between is an audiobook novel formerly broadcast on CBC Radio. A tale of the aftermath of the Vietnam War, The Time in Between tells of Charles Boatman as he returns to Vietnam, where he fought nearly thirty years ago as a reluctant and youthful soldier. When he disappears, his daughter Ada and her brother Jon search for him on the streets of DaNang and beyond. As one slim lead after another disappoints both siblings, Ada sinks deeper into hopelessness while Jon becomes enveloped in the urban nightlife to avoid his worst fears. It is Ada who must finally confront and bear the long-kept secret of her father, in this emotional and introspective narrative, aptly read aloud by "Battlestar Galactica" actor Michael Hogan and radio and theatre actress Tricia Collins. 3 CDs, 4 hours, abridged.

Descriptive and Moody

Reminded me of a Graham Greene novel - maybe it was the location. Yes, it's sad and seems to go nowhere - kind of like real life sometimes. However, the author does a great job of creating atmosphere. I thought there would be more closure, there isn't - but, it's still a good read.

"His love for you is like weight that you have to carry"

Charles Boatman has spent most of his life haunted by the chaos of the Vietnam War. Enlisting at twenty, but having no real desire to fight, Charles, after almost three decades, is still struggling to win his own private war of salvation. Upon his return from the battle zone, he moves to the isolated mountains of British Columbia, Canada where he builds a home and raises his three children, his eldest daughter Ada, and the twins, Jon and Del, intent to eke out a life living of the land, whilst trying to suppress the demons of his past. Plagued by nightmares and dreams, the ghosts of the murdered, Charles can never quite exorcise the bloody images of battle, particularly the senseless killing of a young Vietnamese boy on the Han River, whom he shot in a moment of fear. With the exodus of his children, leaving to making their own lives for themselves, Charles feels ancient and unmoored, so on the spur of the moment, he books a ticket to Vietnam, and then cancels it, unsure of what he will find if he goes. When an old war colleague lends him a book written by a North Vietnamese soldier, Charles is immediately drawn to this young man's harrowing story of survival; the author's brooding photograph and the sadness that seems to hover around and above him intriguing Charles. The story provides Charles' final catalysis, opening up a kinship with something, awakening of the moral forces that have so overwhelmed him. Twenty-eight years after leaving Vietnam as a young soldier, Charles decides to make the return trip, returning to a country that has had such a profound effect on his life. Charles rebooks a ticket to Hanoi, thinking that in some way he might conclude an event in his life that has consumed and shaped him. However, upon his arrival this aging war veteran abruptly vanishes. It is left to his children, Ada and Jon to pick up the pieces, to travel to Vietnam, to this "perplexing and alien place, where the language was more beautiful because they could not understand it," to find and perhaps recover their missing father. Whilst Jon travels, seeking out the distraction of men, Ada is left in DaNang, trying to make sense of Charles' story. She meets an officious and unhelpful police inspector, who tells her that her father remains missing, and falls into the company of ex-pat American missionary Jack Doud, and his distracted, inattentive wife, Elaine, both had met Charles, even had dinner with him, and remembered that he had told them he felt "lost." Eventually Ada finds solace in the arms of a Hoang Vu, a disconsolate Vietnamese artist, who has survived the war and survived the hard times after the war, but continues to be plagued by his own ghosts. A letter found in her father's bag gives Ada a sign that she so desperately needs; it's as though she is connected to her father as his voice lifts and falls away, the message tells of him looking out over the harbor of DaNang and contemplating, with great peace, his own death. Wracked by the