 Bettina
AUTHOR: Thomas J. Childs ISBN: 0921833601
Bettina's end seems near. As she feels her days draw to a close, her mind travels back to her first love, a young French scholar who introduced her to Guillaume de Lorris' 13th-century masterpiece on courtly love, Le Roman de la Rose. In the Roman, a dreamer enters a garden, where Eros is holding court. The dreamer discovers a perfect rosebud, and yearns to pluck it, but is dissuaded by the protestations of the others in the garden. Thereafter, he meditates on the unattainability of earthly love—to pluck the rose is to destroy it. Bettina knows all about earthly love. Bettina is a long-distance bus who grew devoted to a young medieval literature scholar on the Paris-Lyon run, when he traveled home from school on her every Friday night. She remembers the night he met the girl, and how he began to tell the girl Le Roman, as only he could. When it became clear that her scholar would not have time to finish his story before the end of the journey, Bettina broke down by the side of the road. The consequences were swift; Bettina was removed from service and never saw her scholar again. She had sacrificed herself so that her scholar could complete the story and be happy with another. Even years later, Bettina's devotion to her scholar remained perfect. Spencer and Phoebe are star-crossed lovers. They have abandoned their separate lives in Red Deer and Montreal to restore Bettina, who has fallen into disrepair. They start the Bettina Line, crisscrossing the continent with a few select passengers at a time. Bettina carries them lovingly, longingly, grateful for a last chance to make the love between two people into something perfect. But as the miles pass, and things turn more complicated between Phoebe and Spencer, Bettina reflects on the lessons of love she first learned from her scholar. Bettina is an unusual, quirky love story. A romance with wheels.
REVIEWS: "This wry, heartfelt little gem of a novel is a romance told by an aging but resilient omnibus with its heart (oil pump? alternator?) set dangerously close to its human cargo. The tone feels like Seinfeld meets Chaucer, bawdy and acerbic in ways both utterly current and charmingly antiquated. Then events move gradually into more shadowed territory. Thomas Childs presses buttons here that will plumb familiar depths for lovers who've known the doldrums of alienated affection. This debut work takes uncommon risks, and succeeds uniquely. Bettina is as incisive as it it disarming, and finally as committed to healing as it is to the stubborn cycles of accusation and guilt." —The Globe & Mail
"Thomas J. Childs has accomplished a nearly impossible feat: he has written a first novel that is utterly unlike anything else currently being published. Told from the point of view of a compassionate and erudite bus, Bettina is a brilliantly crafted tale of the quest for Love that combines the resonance of the mediaeval allegory with the edgy bite of contemporary realism. A virtuoso performance." —Keith Maillard
"Perhaps the most unusual of these quest narratives is the quirky Bettina, which is a modern love story loosely based on maedieval allegory and told by the aging but perceptive bus after whom the book is named. Yes a bus! The well-versed Bettina is convinced that the ideal love sought in the Roman de la Rose is still attainable, even in a cynical era, and when circumstances thwart the lovers, Spencer and Phoebe, who are driving her on what may be her final journey across North America, she deliberately stalls or self-sabotages by creating mechanical failures which metaphorically represent the damage needing to be repaired in their relationship, forcing them to slow down until reconciliation can be achieved. Our willingness to suspend our disbelief is immediate, so convincingly rendered is the compassionate personality of all incredible characters. Thomas Childs manages to balance the ribald wit of contemporary dialogue with idealistic musings on the nature of love, the coarse and often banal details of physical passion with lofty and erudite abstractions. This is an original work that could easily have slipped into parody or bathos, but instead delights us with a fresh approach to an old theme a new and varied voice telling us the same story, but with conviction and passion." —Event |
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