Days of Feasting and Rejoicing

Quotes

“A new Bergen is always reason to celebrate.”

“David Bergen’s new novel is a tightly wound thriller with a monstrous protagonist who induces equal amounts of horror and admiration. It’s a hell of a tightrope-walk that brings to mind the best of Patricia Highsmith.”

“Taut, engrossing, and tense, Days of Feasting and Rejoicing is a fine-tuned, psychologically nuanced suspense story that offers so much more than most literary, crime thrillers, even those twice as long. Expertly crafted and impossible to put down.”

“Days of Feasting and Rejoicing smartly renews the story of dark reinvention we associate with Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels and Antonioni’s The Passenger. With his typical elegance, David Bergen compellingly moves us through disquiet, moral tension, high drama, and the fully human dilemmas of chief inspector Net Wantok, and into the killing mind of Esther Maile. The novel beautifully plays the desire for release against the impossibility of true escape.”

“An homage to Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley that Bergen makes his own and turns into a wickedly addictive neo-noir.”

“Humming with tension, the narrative was wonderfully strange and absolutely gripping.”

“Days of Feasting and Rejoicing is an unsettling read. Its assured and concise prose draws the reader in to wallow in its anxious moodiness, and Bergen’s examination of its boldly dark material inspires deep questions about the human condition, about how we judge right, wrong, and what exists in between.”

“The novel explores identity, deception, and the uncertain boundaries between innocence and guilt. For readers of literary crime fiction and psychological suspense.”

Awards

• Rome News-Tribune Pick