Review: Days of Feasting and Rejoicing by David Bergen
Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2025
This is the second of Bergen's novels I've read and I've enjoyed both very much. I reviewed this book for The British Columbia Review, and this article was originally published in The BC Review on September 1, 2025.
This is the second of Bergen's novels I've read and I've enjoyed both very much. I reviewed this book for The British Columbia Review, and this article was originally published in The BC Review on September 1, 2025.
***
One of the most compelling things about starting a novel is the opportunity to climb inside a character’s head and spend time getting to know them. David Bergen’s latest novel Days of Feasting and Rejoicing is a remarkable and chilling character study that allowed me to come to know a woman whose surface persona belies the empty darkness underneath.
Hanging out in main character Esther Maile’s head is unsettling, uncomfortable, and terribly fascinating. She’s a young American woman living and working in Thailand, whose mother died some time ago. She’s become close friends with Christine Case, a Canadian woman who lives in a suburb of Bangkok. At the beginning of the story, Esther has moved into one half of Christine’s duplex, and they work and vacation together. When they take a trip to a Bali beach, Christine unexpectedly drowns, and the police mistake Esther for Christine. Esther doesn’t correct them, and thus begins a psychologically perilous tale of deception, manipulation, and murder.
If that sounds interesting, Bergen’s portrait of a woman who draws the unsuspecting into her web and threatens to devour them as she stops at nothing to protect her unstable sense of self, will not disappoint. Esther is the nidus for all the psychological precarity and interpersonal drama that Bergen offers here. She’s the person that other characters react to, either bouncing off her surface and escaping her gravity, or getting caught in her sphere. She creates instability for herself, too, as she tries to fill her need for connection in the most maladaptive ways. Often, when she was on the page, I felt a bone-deep sense of uneasiness.
Bergen’s first chapter is a pleasure to read as he introduces Esther. She’s a strange character, presenting as highly moral and controlled, modest, and self-aware. She pays attention and she notices everything, coming off as overtly judgemental. On one level she disdains Christine’s suspect morals, but on another she deeply loves her. One evening in Bali she tries on Christine’s clothes and takes on her Canadian persona when, sitting alone at a bar, the bartender flirts with her. When this bartender invites her to a party, it sends Esther into a moral panic, and she flees to her hotel room alone.
The policeman in charge of investigating the suspicious details of Christine’s death is Net Wantok, a patient and kind man who is also the caretaker for his severely ill wife. Their daughter disappeared several years ago, a crushing loss. He’s shrewd and knows something’s off about Esther’s story but can’t quite put his finger on it. He’s not perfect, but his character is rich and real and stands in stark contrast to Esther’s superficiality.
When Christine’s brother Carl arrives from Canada to identify a drowning victim that might be his sister, Esther feels cornered. The story of Esther and Carl occupies a large middle section of the book and has the tone of a horror novel, while at the same time being meticulously detailed and clinically detached. It was a curious juxtaposition and worked as an example of Esther’s ability to engage in a huge degree of depersonalization. It was also a long, lingering glance at her psychopathy.
Everything Esther does is performative, and as the narrative developed, what I first took for exquisite self-awareness became more an examination of fragile narcissism. It’s frightening how Esther plays fast and loose with the truth. After Christine dies, Esther exists in a sort of liminal space where she is at times Esther, at times Christine, and sometimes a bit of both. Throughout, Esther’s truth is slippery and subjective; by thinking or saying something false, she makes it true. It seems eerie in our current post-truth world.
Thailand, with its landscape, people, and food, plays a tangible role in the novel. When Wantok makes a meal for his ill wife, it’s almost poetic:
"…he barbequed strips of marinated beef on the outdoor patio, heating and fanning the charcoal…He boiled rice noodles and strained them. Chopped some broccoli and peppers and fried them in peanut oil. Laid the vegetables on the plate. He served the noodles in two bowls, placed the beef on top, sprinkled a little cilantro beside the beef, found chopsticks, and sat down at the foot of the bed to eat with his wife."
One of the most compelling things about starting a novel is the opportunity to climb inside a character’s head and spend time getting to know them. David Bergen’s latest novel Days of Feasting and Rejoicing is a remarkable and chilling character study that allowed me to come to know a woman whose surface persona belies the empty darkness underneath.
Hanging out in main character Esther Maile’s head is unsettling, uncomfortable, and terribly fascinating. She’s a young American woman living and working in Thailand, whose mother died some time ago. She’s become close friends with Christine Case, a Canadian woman who lives in a suburb of Bangkok. At the beginning of the story, Esther has moved into one half of Christine’s duplex, and they work and vacation together. When they take a trip to a Bali beach, Christine unexpectedly drowns, and the police mistake Esther for Christine. Esther doesn’t correct them, and thus begins a psychologically perilous tale of deception, manipulation, and murder.
If that sounds interesting, Bergen’s portrait of a woman who draws the unsuspecting into her web and threatens to devour them as she stops at nothing to protect her unstable sense of self, will not disappoint. Esther is the nidus for all the psychological precarity and interpersonal drama that Bergen offers here. She’s the person that other characters react to, either bouncing off her surface and escaping her gravity, or getting caught in her sphere. She creates instability for herself, too, as she tries to fill her need for connection in the most maladaptive ways. Often, when she was on the page, I felt a bone-deep sense of uneasiness.
 |
| Author David Bergen (photo: Luke Bergen) |
The policeman in charge of investigating the suspicious details of Christine’s death is Net Wantok, a patient and kind man who is also the caretaker for his severely ill wife. Their daughter disappeared several years ago, a crushing loss. He’s shrewd and knows something’s off about Esther’s story but can’t quite put his finger on it. He’s not perfect, but his character is rich and real and stands in stark contrast to Esther’s superficiality.
 |
| David Bergen |
Everything Esther does is performative, and as the narrative developed, what I first took for exquisite self-awareness became more an examination of fragile narcissism. It’s frightening how Esther plays fast and loose with the truth. After Christine dies, Esther exists in a sort of liminal space where she is at times Esther, at times Christine, and sometimes a bit of both. Throughout, Esther’s truth is slippery and subjective; by thinking or saying something false, she makes it true. It seems eerie in our current post-truth world.
Thailand, with its landscape, people, and food, plays a tangible role in the novel. When Wantok makes a meal for his ill wife, it’s almost poetic:
"…he barbequed strips of marinated beef on the outdoor patio, heating and fanning the charcoal…He boiled rice noodles and strained them. Chopped some broccoli and peppers and fried them in peanut oil. Laid the vegetables on the plate. He served the noodles in two bowls, placed the beef on top, sprinkled a little cilantro beside the beef, found chopsticks, and sat down at the foot of the bed to eat with his wife."
The weather is sultry hot and sweaty, and the peaceful village life is on display: “A boy passed in the distance, switching gently against the buttocks of his water buffalo as he led the creature to the water hole. All was calm.”
It’s the foreign-ness that also lends a shimmer of disquiet when Esther does things that are beyond acceptable. As a reader I felt transported to a place where the rules are just slightly different and consequences for one’s actions are not always predictable, whether you are the perpetrator or the victim. In one sequence, Esther has followed Christine’s brother Carl to Bangkok, and at night she emerges from her hotel into the noisy street dressed in Christine’s clothes. She observes Carl behaving as he never would at home and disapproves, yet is drawn to visions of Carl’s sexual liaison. Later, driving home in a taxi, traffic is held up by a fatal motorcycle accident, and Esther watches the accident victim’s “attempted extraction,” as emergency workers stand around and smoke cigarettes. It all feels uncomfortably unsafe and otherworldly when combined with Esther’s malevolence.
It can be difficult to write a satisfying ending, but Port Edward-born Bergen (Away From the Dead) got it right. There are hints of shadowy happenings that suggest that this is not Esther’s first attempt at filling her desperate need to find the perfect relationship, and there are vague clues that there’s trauma in her past. By the last chapters, I knew that Bergen was not going to tell us Esther’s back story. Some readers may see this as a frustrating liability in Bergen’s narrative, but I found it a strength. It’s intriguing to me that the story of Esther/Christine may represent just one cycle of this young woman’s pathology.
What does Esther teach us? Maybe that the search for the perfect connection, one that will meet all our needs and endure forever, is a fiction. In the Biblical book of Esther, the Jews are instructed by God to celebrate freedom from their enemies with “days of feasting and rejoicing.” Esther Maile’s brief days of “feasting” come with a high cost and are all too fleeting. She basks in the times when she has carefully constructed her safe, artificial world but the emptiness always rises, and the darkness will descend again. Days of Feasting and Rejoicing is at once a compelling character study, a chilling thriller, and a cautionary tale to beware the never-ending quest to fill the void within.
It’s the foreign-ness that also lends a shimmer of disquiet when Esther does things that are beyond acceptable. As a reader I felt transported to a place where the rules are just slightly different and consequences for one’s actions are not always predictable, whether you are the perpetrator or the victim. In one sequence, Esther has followed Christine’s brother Carl to Bangkok, and at night she emerges from her hotel into the noisy street dressed in Christine’s clothes. She observes Carl behaving as he never would at home and disapproves, yet is drawn to visions of Carl’s sexual liaison. Later, driving home in a taxi, traffic is held up by a fatal motorcycle accident, and Esther watches the accident victim’s “attempted extraction,” as emergency workers stand around and smoke cigarettes. It all feels uncomfortably unsafe and otherworldly when combined with Esther’s malevolence.
It can be difficult to write a satisfying ending, but Port Edward-born Bergen (Away From the Dead) got it right. There are hints of shadowy happenings that suggest that this is not Esther’s first attempt at filling her desperate need to find the perfect relationship, and there are vague clues that there’s trauma in her past. By the last chapters, I knew that Bergen was not going to tell us Esther’s back story. Some readers may see this as a frustrating liability in Bergen’s narrative, but I found it a strength. It’s intriguing to me that the story of Esther/Christine may represent just one cycle of this young woman’s pathology.
What does Esther teach us? Maybe that the search for the perfect connection, one that will meet all our needs and endure forever, is a fiction. In the Biblical book of Esther, the Jews are instructed by God to celebrate freedom from their enemies with “days of feasting and rejoicing.” Esther Maile’s brief days of “feasting” come with a high cost and are all too fleeting. She basks in the times when she has carefully constructed her safe, artificial world but the emptiness always rises, and the darkness will descend again. Days of Feasting and Rejoicing is at once a compelling character study, a chilling thriller, and a cautionary tale to beware the never-ending quest to fill the void within.
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