“‘Bear…I love you. Pull my head off,” (Engel 90).
Lou works a quiet, easy life in the archives of the Historical Institute, but when her boss offers her the chance to catalogue the library of an eccentric nineteeth-century colonel in northern Ontario, she jumps at the chance. But when Lou gets there she is shocked to find that she will be the colonel’s home with a bear. As Lou begins cataloguing what she finds in the house, her mind drifts to the past occupants and the bear himself, until he becomes an obsession to her.
Bear made quite the rounds on Tumblr back in the day when users discovered that Marian Engel’s novel about a lonely woman starting a sexual relationship with a literal bear won the Governor General’s Award in 1976. It was how I learned about the book and what made me curious to read it. With a premise like that, I had to see what all the fuss was about.
Well. There is an archivist, there is a bear, and there are some sexual scenes with the archivist and the bear, but Bear is also more than it’s weird bestiality. Lou is an interesting character to follow. Hidden away in her job and used as a kind of sexual tool with the men around her rather than as anything pleasurable, I liked seeing the growth with Lou as she learned to feel pleasure and find love within herself. Engel is also a very good writer, the descriptions in Bear put readers right in Lou’s cabin while also experiencing the changing seasons on a Northern Ontario island.
Bear is a weird book, but I think Canadian literature (and media) is at it’s best when it’s weird. While I may have read this book more as a joke and out of curiousity, I’m glad I did because it was surprisingly good. Don’t miss out on this strange Canadian classic!
Publication: January 1 1976
Publisher: New Canadian Library
Pages: 136 pages (Paperback)
Source: Library
Genre: Fiction, Literary, Canadian
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:
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 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.
Sarah O'Connor 