Bear

GASP! She was with a gay guy the WHOLE TIME!

From what little I knew about this, I was expecting something weird and lascivious. Instead, it was a literary and touching (if a bit odd) love story. I really enjoyed it.

Why was she naked? Why was the bear there? Could there have been a personality?
For me, this is 1.5 stars because I wanted to DNF, but I was just so confused that I needed to know if there would be an explanation.

On one hand, I appreciate reading such a wonderful, thoughtful fable about a lonely, unsatisfied woman who takes a break from city living to learn local history and reflect on her life. But on the other hand, she's really trying to fuck that bear.

After reading the brilliant The Pisces by Melissa Broder, I've been almost desperate for weird/slightly unhinged literary writing on a “real-not real?” relationships with animals, or in the case of Pisces... fish?

While an outrageous concept, I think it opens up on something regarding emotions surrounding isolation, loneliness, grief, and our uncertainties for our brief human lives and the world we inhabit. Unconventional, unreal scenarios can open up a true vulnerability with an authors characters on these topics because usually even with our most beloved friends we can struggle to tap into a place of pure honesty. But when sharing with a ‘fish' or a bear, whats there to lose?

Bear succeeded in all the ways I was hoping for. Our main character is essentially alone in a cabin, in the wilderness when she meets a bear and there unfolds a strange descent of interactions with the animal. We touch on a good majority of the ideas I mentioned above, and Engel just gives. I could've read a thousand more pages in this story but the length in the end felt appropriate for our main characters life/story.

If you enjoyed the Pisces, Bear should be on your priority as a next read.

This was everything I expected and more. It's an erotic tale of a woman and a bear, it won a big Canadian literary award in the 70ies and since then has been a forgotten controversy or maybe a well-kept secret. It's resurfacing again now, hopefully reaching proper cult novel status. Just googling the cover art for this book is worthwhile. It's not just about a sexual encounter between woman and bear, it's about solitude, romanticism (the poets), wilderness, colonization, feminism, sexual freedom, and the reinvigoration of one's spirit.

The past, as they say, is a different country. The majority of this book is standard, kind of uninspired standard Canadiana - city person traveling to the backwoods, hoping to find themselves and solve the anomie of modern life.

Then there's parts where the woman's having sex with the bear, and those I just don't know about.

This book was better than I was expecting...even though I don't know what I was expecting, considering it's a book in which a woman has sex with a bear that was pushed to publication by Robertson Davies and then won the Governor General's award. There's a lot of conflicting information there. But, as I was reading it, I could not judge Lou for her choices. I mean, I would not have made the same choices as her, but I can't really blame her. Especially considering the bear is a smybol of...men? or her life? or something? I'm sorry, it's hard to read past the text to the subtext when the text includes a woman fondling a bear's testicles.

So Lou is an independent young woman, unattached, with a career that she kind of likes but is starting to bore her, she's in a rut, she can't make connections with men on any meaningful level, so she jumps at the chance to live on an island in the middle of nowhere for a summer cataloguing books. Only there's a bear who lives on the island with her, a pet of the previous owner of the house, and she's expected to feed the bear but not much else. She enjoys the solitude of the wilderness, and soon develops a bond with the bear, and one night, in a fit of passionate loneliness, allows the bear to, y'know, help her out. She didn't seek out the bear, she just...didn't stop him. Can you blame her? I mean there are plenty of ways for a woman to react to that which don't look like bestiality but whatever floats your boat. It was consensual anyway. Lou falls in love with the bear over the summer, because he doesn't judge her or make her feel empty. She's fully aware of the fact that he's a bear and doesn't have feelings, but love is love! In the end, while attempting to actually consummate their relationship, the bear rips her back open with his claws ('cause he's a bear, we all saw that coming) and decides that she's actually not really in love the bear anymore, and maybe she should just look for a new job to get herself out of her life rut. If it takes a bear going down on you/mauling you to figure that out, I kind of feel like you need to take a look up outside of your own self once in a while.

I actually liked this book quite a bit. The writing is good, and I think when I read it again one day I'll be able to look past the sensational bits and hear the message of the book a bit better, but I do recommend it! Unless you don't like swear words. Or bear testicles. On the other hand it is reallllly Canadian!