January 12, 2026

Days of Feasting and Rejoicing, by David Bergen

“It was too dangerous, and fantasy so easily descended into violence and delirium. To act, or not act. Was it that simple? What consequences would she suffer? She looked down at the hands in her lap. Oh, Esther. What will you do?”

Lines are blurred in David Bergen’s novel Days of Feasting and Rejoicing, between truth and fantasy, right and wrong, between a person and another. The novel begins in Bali where two young white women who live in Thailand are travelling, and then one of them ends up dead. The other woman, Esther Maile, flies back to Thailand on the dead woman’s passport, and continues to behave curiously, although the narrative is so firmly fixed in her twisted mind that it’s hard to see what’s really happening. Eventually Police Inspector Net Wantok’s point of view enters the story, and we see him struggling to put together the pieces of the puzzle, which become extra puzzling after the dead girl’s brother flies to Thailand to find out what happened to his sister, and he disappears. Dark, unsettling, and impeccably executed, I was totally riveted by this story, which was so deliciously disturbing.