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From Amazon
Set in Winnipeg, The Case of Lena S. features a tragic heroine, a confused aspiring teenage poet from a broken family, and various wise mentors. In short, it has all the necessary ingredients for a traumatic coming-of-age story along the lines of Ordinary People. Mason Crowe is a high school student just beginning to discover the opposite sex at a time of strife in his parents' marriage. Lena Schellendal is the troubled young woman for whom, after a false start with a young woman already spoken for in an arranged East Indian marriage, he falls. Danny Crowe is the older brother who can't keep his eyes on his own model girlfriend when one of Mason's paramours is around, while Mr. Ferry, a blind man to whom Mason reads, and Ms. Abendschade, a high school teacher with a narrative speedbump of a name, are the guides giving out valuable lessons about writing, life, and women. Winnipeg writer David Bergen, here on his third novel, has a prose style as flat as the Manitoba prairie, even when he breaks, Dave Eggers style, into footnotes: "What [Mr. Ferry] doesn't tell Mason is that his wife left him for another man. Later, during their readings, he will describe this in greater detail," reads one. The footnotes bolster the idea of the book as a case study, but despite its title, The Case of Lena S. is far more a portrait of young Mason's relationships with women in general than of Lena herself. Mason, though, is quite unformed, and it's only when the relatively unorthodox Lena comes onto the scene that Bergen's prose takes off: "[Mason] loved it when [Ms. Abendschade] talked about longing and regret and described the girl swinging her hair like a rope, and he wanted to ask her questions about Lena, about what Lena Schellendal might want from him and what he, Mason, should do about her." Ultimately, Lena S. is as much a mystery to Bergen as she is to his young hero, and as such she remains an enigma to the reader long after the final page of The Case of Lena S. --Shawn Conner
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