Publication
Amsterdam Uitgeverij Koppernik 2021
ISBN
9789492313997
Language
Collections
Description
The winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, Marian Engel's most famous - and most controversial - novel tells the unforgettable story of a woman transformed by a primal, erotic relationship. Lou is a lonely librarian who spends her days in the dusty archives of the Historical Institute. When an unusual field assignment comes her way, she jumps at the chance to travel to a remote island in northern Ontario, where she will spend the summer cataloguing a library that belonged to an eccentric nineteenth-century colonel. Eager to investigate the estate's curious history, she is shocked to discover that the island has one other inhabitant: a bear. Lou's imagination is soon overtaken by the island's past occupants, whose deep fascination with bears gradually becomes her own. Irresistibly, Lou is led along a path of emotional and sexual self-awakening, as she explores the limits of her own animal nature. What she discovers will change her life forever. As provocative and powerful now as when it was first published. Includes a reading group guide.… (more)
Genres
User reviews
LibraryThing member Nickelini
My challenge is how to describe Bear in one paragraph without sounding silly or missing the important bits. Not sure it can be done, but here goes:
In the opening paragraph of Bear, archivist Lou is described as mole-like. The historical institute she works for has recently been bequeathed a small
Bear is one of those chewy literary books that you can read straight up, or pull apart and explore the layers and symbolism. The author started this when the Writer’s Union of Canada put out a call to established authors to write a piece of pornography (a project that was abandoned when the submissions that came in were dreadfully unpublishable). But Engels ran with the idea. As Margaret Atwood says in her blurb for the book (and I note that something about this reminds me of Atwood’s own book Surfacing), the bear sex is “as plausible as kitchens,” and the short novel is indeed written in a realistic style. But there are a thousand other things going on too. The main one is how Engels plays with and subverts the CanLit canon with its ubiquitous themes of the transformative powers of wilderness, the savage, nature, man against the wilderness, etc and so on. Then there’s the whole second wave feminist sexual awakening trope. But the one that I keep coming back to is—despite the realism—a fabulist feel. Is Bear a play on “Beauty and the Beast”? Or “Snow White and Rose Red”? Or with the lonely octagonal house as one of the characters, is it Gothic? It’s all of these.
My edition had a nice afterword written by university professor Aretha Van Herk that goes over some of the deeper meanings for those readers who got stuck on the sexy bear stuff.
Bear was awarded the Governor General’s Award for Literature, in a year when the jury included Mordecai Richler, Margaret Laurence, and Alice Munro. In places, the writing is absolutely gorgeous, and I can’t stop thinking about this book (and it’s not the bear porn that’s sticking in my mind).
Recommended for: It’s only 115 pages, so if you think it sounds interesting, give it a try. It’s definitely a not-to-be-missed book for anyone who is serious about reading CanLit. I wish I could have studied this at university—it would have been so much fun.
Why I Read This Now: Bear has been in my TBR pile for a while, but I thought to suggest it to my book club after discussion of it went viral on the internet this summer. In my book club, we vote on the books we will read, and every single member voted to read Bear. I look forward to the upcoming discussion.
Rating: Great writing + interesting story + librarian hero + humour + bravery of writing erotica + CanLit playfulness + literary influences = 4.5 stars.
In the opening paragraph of Bear, archivist Lou is described as mole-like. The historical institute she works for has recently been bequeathed a small
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island, with a house and a substantial 19th century library. Lou’s job is to spend the summer there, cataloguing its contents and determining the potential value to the institute. Just by the act of leaving the cold, grey city, Lou begins her transformation (check off CanLit trope). Arriving on the island, Lou learns that the house comes with a bear, who she finds chained up behind the house. Over the summer, Lou forms a sort of friendship with the bear, and yada yada yada, bear porn. Yes, you read that right.Bear is one of those chewy literary books that you can read straight up, or pull apart and explore the layers and symbolism. The author started this when the Writer’s Union of Canada put out a call to established authors to write a piece of pornography (a project that was abandoned when the submissions that came in were dreadfully unpublishable). But Engels ran with the idea. As Margaret Atwood says in her blurb for the book (and I note that something about this reminds me of Atwood’s own book Surfacing), the bear sex is “as plausible as kitchens,” and the short novel is indeed written in a realistic style. But there are a thousand other things going on too. The main one is how Engels plays with and subverts the CanLit canon with its ubiquitous themes of the transformative powers of wilderness, the savage, nature, man against the wilderness, etc and so on. Then there’s the whole second wave feminist sexual awakening trope. But the one that I keep coming back to is—despite the realism—a fabulist feel. Is Bear a play on “Beauty and the Beast”? Or “Snow White and Rose Red”? Or with the lonely octagonal house as one of the characters, is it Gothic? It’s all of these.
My edition had a nice afterword written by university professor Aretha Van Herk that goes over some of the deeper meanings for those readers who got stuck on the sexy bear stuff.
Bear was awarded the Governor General’s Award for Literature, in a year when the jury included Mordecai Richler, Margaret Laurence, and Alice Munro. In places, the writing is absolutely gorgeous, and I can’t stop thinking about this book (and it’s not the bear porn that’s sticking in my mind).
Recommended for: It’s only 115 pages, so if you think it sounds interesting, give it a try. It’s definitely a not-to-be-missed book for anyone who is serious about reading CanLit. I wish I could have studied this at university—it would have been so much fun.
Why I Read This Now: Bear has been in my TBR pile for a while, but I thought to suggest it to my book club after discussion of it went viral on the internet this summer. In my book club, we vote on the books we will read, and every single member voted to read Bear. I look forward to the upcoming discussion.
Rating: Great writing + interesting story + librarian hero + humour + bravery of writing erotica + CanLit playfulness + literary influences = 4.5 stars.
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LibraryThing member Quixada
“Mousy librarian gets freaky with a bear!!!” Well, okay, it is that, but it is also so much more – like brilliant writing. This is the kind of writing that glides. It whispers to you. This is real writing. Engel’s economy of words is great. An example from page 122 of this short 141 page
“It was the night of the falling stars. She took him to the riverbank. They swam in the still, black water. They did not play. They were serious that night. They swam in circles around each other, very solemnly. Then they went to the shore, and instead of shaking himself on her, he lay beside her and licked the water from her body while she, on her back, let the stars fall, one, two, fourteen, a million, it seemed, falling on her, ready to burn her. Once she reached up to one, it seemed so close, but its brightness faded from her grasp, faded into the milky way.”
For me, being a bibliophile and a misanthrope, the character is living a perfect fantasy: Alone in a huge house on an island for the summer cataloging a huge library of rare books. However she didn’t use LibraryThing! (Shame on her!)
Okay, there is bestiality, but Engel handles it very well. The only other book I have ever read that contained bestiality but was really great writing was “The Castle of Communion” by Bernard Noel. (I highly recommend that book too.)
Engel must have gone to a zoo or something and really studied bear movements and habits, because she describes the bear’s behavior perfectly: the way he moves his head, the way he walks, the occasions when he rises to two feet, the way he swims, etc.
This is a really great read. The entire book could be read in two hours or less, however I took much longer because I was savoring sentences and going back and rereading parts.
Highly recommended.
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novel:“It was the night of the falling stars. She took him to the riverbank. They swam in the still, black water. They did not play. They were serious that night. They swam in circles around each other, very solemnly. Then they went to the shore, and instead of shaking himself on her, he lay beside her and licked the water from her body while she, on her back, let the stars fall, one, two, fourteen, a million, it seemed, falling on her, ready to burn her. Once she reached up to one, it seemed so close, but its brightness faded from her grasp, faded into the milky way.”
For me, being a bibliophile and a misanthrope, the character is living a perfect fantasy: Alone in a huge house on an island for the summer cataloging a huge library of rare books. However she didn’t use LibraryThing! (Shame on her!)
Okay, there is bestiality, but Engel handles it very well. The only other book I have ever read that contained bestiality but was really great writing was “The Castle of Communion” by Bernard Noel. (I highly recommend that book too.)
Engel must have gone to a zoo or something and really studied bear movements and habits, because she describes the bear’s behavior perfectly: the way he moves his head, the way he walks, the occasions when he rises to two feet, the way he swims, etc.
This is a really great read. The entire book could be read in two hours or less, however I took much longer because I was savoring sentences and going back and rereading parts.
Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member mpho3
Beautiful writing. Yes, the bear stuff happens, which is uncomfortable and gross but also sort of matter of fact and the happenings are sparse. The bear sex stuff isn't the focal point. The taboo is a stop along the journey of a woman confronting her true nature. Afflicted with a deep loneliness
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and existential angst, she come to terms with roads not chosen and where they've landed her. Not for the squeamish, but if you can put aside the moments of grotesquery, it's a quick, thought-provoking read with some giggles and lovely turns of phrase. Show Less
LibraryThing member LynnB
This is an infamous Canadian novel that remains controversial to this day. It is about a lonely woman who works as an archivist and has a tawdry sexual relationship with her boss. When the institute she works for is given a collection in an old, isolated house, she is sent to catalog the library
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and other contents of the house. And there, she begins a sexual relationship with the donor's pet bear. Through this relationship, our heroine is able to come to terms with her life, her choices and reclaim her self-worth. Sounds a bit weird, I know. But it works as a story of self-examination and self-acceptance. Show Less
LibraryThing member VicCavalli
Marian Engel’s BEAR is a surreal novel rooted in trauma: “She remembered . . . something sad happening. Something, yes, that happened when she was very young, some loss” (7). This event has permanently scarred Lou’s relationships with men, and the bear she meets can’t possibly heal her
The novel is a strange weaving of realism and delusional fantasies: “Bear,” she would say to him, tempting him, “I am only a human woman. Tear my thin skin with your clattering claws” (97). But when in the climactic scene he does rip her bare skin, all her hopes of sexual consummation are shattered and their relationship is instantly over: “Go,” she screamed (108). The book ends with the bear passive, manipulated, his fate a desensitized pawn for human needs. There is never a true polarizing of the solitary academic life of a librarian and raw genuine nature in the novel, and so the book’s final mystery is what Lou’s epiphany could possibly be? What did she really need, want, and find?
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because he has been “on [a] chain for so many years” (28), essentially a domesticated prisoner. The bear is not free nor wild. Lou does unchain him, but not so he can return to the wild (supposedly this would expose him to the dangers of hunters). She controls his food supply and washing schedule. She controls their evolving relationship: “She took him to the riverbank” (98), and when her erotic wishes are not fulfilled, “She took him to his enclosure and sent him to bed” (99).The novel is a strange weaving of realism and delusional fantasies: “Bear,” she would say to him, tempting him, “I am only a human woman. Tear my thin skin with your clattering claws” (97). But when in the climactic scene he does rip her bare skin, all her hopes of sexual consummation are shattered and their relationship is instantly over: “Go,” she screamed (108). The book ends with the bear passive, manipulated, his fate a desensitized pawn for human needs. There is never a true polarizing of the solitary academic life of a librarian and raw genuine nature in the novel, and so the book’s final mystery is what Lou’s epiphany could possibly be? What did she really need, want, and find?
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LibraryThing member Birdo82
Controversial, taboo, uncomfortable: Bear is all of these things, but that does not overshadow its refined writing and subtle message about a woman coming to terms with herself without a “man.”
LibraryThing member smetchie
This book left me bewildered. It's quiet and stunning with great spaces in the writing for the reader to explore and fill.
LibraryThing member m.belljackson
Chosen by her casual sex partner and Museum director to inspect Cary's Island,
"she,"Lou, the little basement mole, methodically plans how she will approach the coveted library.
Recently bequeathed to the Museum, the Island, the amazing Fowler Octagon House,
and Colonel Cary's library immediately
But it is the unfortunately chained BEAR who opens her, body and soul, to life.
Marian Engel's short, terse sentences make both compelling and beautiful reading.
Had Hemingway been a more decent human and a woman, he would have been proud
to have written this gently erotic and unforgettable novel.
The boatman, Homer, weaves in and out of the story, yet it is Lucy who walks off with our love.
"she,"Lou, the little basement mole, methodically plans how she will approach the coveted library.
Recently bequeathed to the Museum, the Island, the amazing Fowler Octagon House,
and Colonel Cary's library immediately
Show More
captivate her. But it is the unfortunately chained BEAR who opens her, body and soul, to life.
Marian Engel's short, terse sentences make both compelling and beautiful reading.
Had Hemingway been a more decent human and a woman, he would have been proud
to have written this gently erotic and unforgettable novel.
The boatman, Homer, weaves in and out of the story, yet it is Lucy who walks off with our love.
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LibraryThing member bucketofrhymes
I dunno. I see the underlying message and trailblazing importance of this book. I just can't get past the bestiality thing.
LibraryThing member 1morechapter
Ummm…..no. No, no, no, no, no. I don’t think I can recommend this title. That this book won the Governor General’s Award flabbergasts me. A librarian and a bear get kinky on a small Canadian island. That’s all you really need to know to realize why I didn’t like this book.
1976 Governor
1976, 141 pp.
1976 Governor
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General’s Award1976, 141 pp.
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LibraryThing member eloavox
Somewhat staid, understated prose, sent hurtling along by provocative plot.
LibraryThing member polywogg
BOTTOM-LINE:
Bestiality is a strange theme for an award-winner
.
PLOT OR PREMISE:
A historical librarian gets a chance to catalog the books at a remote island home for a summer in Northern Ontario, and encounters locals, free time to figure out her life, and a pet bear.
.
WHAT I LIKED:
This book was given
.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
I found the romanticization of the relationship with the bear a bit odd, as was the depersonalization of her other sexual partners during the summer. I also felt there were gaps in the ending -- we saw what she intended to do, not what she would do once she was back in Toronto.
.
DISCLOSURE:
I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I was not personal friends with the author.
Bestiality is a strange theme for an award-winner
.
PLOT OR PREMISE:
A historical librarian gets a chance to catalog the books at a remote island home for a summer in Northern Ontario, and encounters locals, free time to figure out her life, and a pet bear.
.
WHAT I LIKED:
This book was given
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to me back in my teens, a gift of quality literature as it had just won the Governor General's Award for fiction. I knew nothing about it as I started to read it. And I was relatively shocked to see "high literature" include bestiality and graphic descriptions of oral sex performed by the bear on the main character. The historical parts were awesome, as was the descriptions of the island and the passage of the summer..
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
I found the romanticization of the relationship with the bear a bit odd, as was the depersonalization of her other sexual partners during the summer. I also felt there were gaps in the ending -- we saw what she intended to do, not what she would do once she was back in Toronto.
.
DISCLOSURE:
I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I was not personal friends with the author.
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LibraryThing member boredgames
loved it learnt a lot about emotional and erotic intensity and tension from this short satisfying novel. i'd view it as a companion piece to MRS CALIBAN by Rachel Ingalls, almost, with THE HARPY by Megan Hunter perhaps completing this brilliant trilogy of isolated women encountering the wilderness
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within and outside of them. Show Less
LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
This came to my attention through the annual catalog I get around Christmastime from David R. Godine Publishing. I had never heard of it, but the description was almost irresistible, so I treated myself to a copy (and a few other things as well). It was a fast and fascinating read, and as the
(2019)
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publisher noted in the thank you I received with my order "not at all lubricious" despite its somewhat bizarre plot element of a woman on a remote island and her erotic relationship with a bear. It has a mythic, fairy tale quality, and the writing is wonderful.(2019)
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LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
Lou, an archivist for an Institute is sent to a remote Ottawan island to catalog the estate of Colonel Joycelyn Cary. The institute has acquired the Pennarth Estate's books, journals, and other ephemera. Admittedly, I had to go into this story with an extremely open mind. From everything I heard,
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the only detail that stuck out to me was that the protagonist has sexual feelings for, and tries to copulate with, a bear. Say what now? The second thing people said, as if to follow up on that statement, was that Engel writes in such a way that a relationship between a woman and a bear is totally plausible. My first indication of realism comes when, even though Lou and the bear have a growing friendship, Lou is constantly reminding herself he is a bear that weighs over 300 pounds with claws and teeth. Bears are predators that are attracted to the emanating odors of blood and fear. To be sure, the writing is beautiful. The treatment of women in society (in the 70s) is accurately articulated. I just couldn't wrap my brain around the fact that Lou's choices for male companionship were so wretched that she had to settle for an animal. The end. Show Less
LibraryThing member Josh_Hanagarne
Boring. Implausible, but not in a fun way. I just do not get it, I guess I am too dumb. Are all women attracted to bears, or just to Canadian bears? I don't know anyone who's in love with a bear.
LibraryThing member KJC__
I was reading Canada: A Very Short Introduction when it pointed out this book and that in the book the protagonist has an actual affair with an actual bear. With a premise like that, I was intrigued.
We follow Lou, a lonely archivist living in Toronto who is sent to a small island with an octagonal
We follow Lou, a lonely archivist living in Toronto who is sent to a small island with an octagonal
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house to organize and categorize the books, and determine whether they contain anything of interest to historians. The book is introspective, Lou spends most of her time on the island alone, except for the bear. When we begin the book, Lou is clearly unhappy—she's lonely; her relationships are all unsatisfying; and there's just a general air of sadness around her. Show Less
Awards
Original publication date
1976