Historical Fiction; Coming-of-Age
Historical Fiction
Just by looking at the cover or reading the first line of Bert Breen's Barn, it's pretty easy to get the vibe that we're not in the twenty-first century. Bert Breen's Barn is the type of historical novel about completely ordinary people going about the tasks of day-to-day life in a bygone era. Tom is just a boy who does chores at home, works in a mill, and eventually builds a barn.
It may be just over a century ago (less, when the book came out in 1975), but it sure feels far away. A review of the book when it was published says: "The setting for the novel is less than a century ago, yet the way of life Mr. Edmonds describes could not be more foreign to the present time if he were a science-fiction writer portraying the remote past or imagining the remote future."
It's true that a whole lot has changed since the big 1-9-0-0 rolled around. The telephone is a strange new thing in the novel, fringed surreys and new wagons are the hot rides in town, and a boy of 13 can choose to go to work rather than go to school.
Those aspects of life were long outdated by the time of the novel's publication, but does that mean that Tom's story, his emotions, and the themes are not relatable or applicable across time? Are there aspects of Tom's story you can relate to despite the time differences? Or does the novel seem even weirder now that it's been almost another half-century since it was published?
Coming-of-Age
Over the course of the novel, Tom changes from a boy watching his mother work into a young man who ably provides for his family. Plus, like with many coming-of-age books, Tom's story is full of firsts: first job, first experience with human mortality, first bank account, even a first time on a train. (There's no first kiss, but a first barn is almost as good.)
We get validation that Tom has grown and changed from multiple characters. At the end of the novel, Mr. Armond doesn't even recognize Tom when he goes to pay the balance on the barn. As Tom observes, "Having things happen bit by bit, you didn't realize how big the changes were" (63.9). Sounds like a coming-of-age statement to us.