voyeuristic streak, to whom Mason reads. Playful, and with deadpan humour, the novel brilliantly captures the yearnings of youth, as well as the tantalizing possibilities and the confounding absurdities that sometimes lie at the heart of our most intimate relationships. Product Description 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