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The Matter With Morris (2010)

by David Bergen(Favorite Author)

3.27 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1554687748 (ISBN13: 9781554687749)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

HarperCollins Canada

review 1: Renown columnist Morris Schutt's life seems to be unravelling after the death of his son, Martin, in Afghanistan. Suffering the guilt of a father who feels he didn't do enough to discourage his boy from enlisting, he has stopped writing, separated from his wife, Lucille, and pulled away from the rest of his family. He pays for sex and carries on a long-distance liaison with a woman he's never met. Seeking a kind of demented independence, he stops visiting his therapist, cashes in his investments, and stashes his life savings in a safe in his apartment. Morris's eccentricities are endearing up to a point, but after a while the reader loses patience with his unremitting anguish and his often childish and impulsive behaviour. (It's starting to seem a bit easy for novelists to... more elicit sympathy for a character by having them lose a child in Iraq or Afghanistan.) There are some true comic moments, and the book is--for all its faults--intensely readable. But one comes away from The Matter with Morris feeling that maybe this is one of David Bergen's lesser works. Shortlisted for the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
review 2: This is the story of a man's struggle to get over the death of his son in Afghanistan. The breakup of his marriage, his attempt to find solace by corresponding with another woman, his paying for a young prostitute who turned out to be son's girl friend - were all attributed to his grief. David Bergen is a good writer - his fluid prose moved the reader along to find out what's wrong with Morris. There were some touching passages, especially the final moment of reconciliation when Morris recognized his fathers' momentary acceptance of the death of Martin and realized that time was slipping away - he had to move on. less

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