Bear by Marian Engel

‘A strange and wonderful book, plausible as kitchens, but shapely as a folktale, and with the same disturbing resonance.’ – Margaret Atwood

Lou is a shy and diligent librarian at the local Heritage Institute. She works monotonous and dusty hours long into the night but she has found nothing – and no one – to go home to. She has resigned herself to passionless sex on her desk with the Director of the Institute.

When she is summoned to a remote island to inventory the estate of Colonel Cary, she takes it as an opportunity to get out of the city, hoping for an industrious summer of cataloguing.

Colonel Cary left many possessions behind, but she didn’t expect the bear. She soon begins to anticipate the bear’s needs for food and company. But as summer blossoms across the island and Lou shakes off the city, she realises the bear might satisfy some needs of her own.*

*Yes, this means exactly what you think it does. This thread is rated M for the bear-fucking, because we can't not talk about the bear-fucking. Also it's what this Canadian classic is famous for. It was published in 1976 and won serious literary awards, people.

I have many questions. If you've read it, give us your thoughts. If you haven't read it, uh... good for you?

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This is a discussion thread for people who have read or are reading the book in question. With that in mind, there are likely to be spoilers throughout. However, in the event of major twists or “how it ends”, please wrap content in spoiler tags.

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[spoiler]Surprise!content here[/spoiler]

The following 1 user Likes Elias Grimstone's post:1 user Likes Elias Grimstone's post
   Reuben Crouch

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look ANOTHER beautiful bee!set <3

I'll be here with thoughts, feelings, etc. later, but my edition actually had discussion questions because we're seriously pushing the "it's literature" angle over here xD To be fair, some of them were along the lines of "Did you find that Engel's precise, slender prose and upbeat realism inhibit Bear's potential mythic underpinnings?" which, lol, but I will bring forth the following:

• What surprised you most about your reaction to this novel?
  
• How do you think the reading public's reaction to this novel would have differed had it been published now as opposed to in 1976? Do you think it would still be viewed as controversial?
  
• Why do you think Lou never gave the bear a proper name?

Also, unrelated to the plot as a whole, I totally thought Colonel Jocelyn was just a man named Jocelyn until about halfway through the book

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   Elias Grimstone

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do you know what happened that night?

— mj makes glorious sets! —

I will hit Kayte's other discussion questions later, but this initial ramble pretty much covers What surprised you most about your reaction to this novel?.

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First off, this is the kind of book I can absolutely imagine that Sally Rooney would have written if she were a Canadian feminist in the 1970s, and also not a coward. It's laconic and inexpressive and plain in style, about an ~intellectual, lonely modern woman, and Bear is obviously a love it/hate it kind of literary novel.

And somehow I, um, didn't actually hate it? no do NOT JUDGE ME YET!!!!!!!!!

At least for the first two thirds, I was reasonably enjoying this. Not totally my bag, and nothing was really happening except a woman categorising some old books and communing with nature, but it was heading for a solid two/three star review? Then came the bear sex, which does necessitate at least a star drop, because, man.

However. I wouldn't even file this under "weird erotica" because (I don't know if it was intended to be, but) it's definitely not erotic, her falling in love with a bear kind of just happens to be the main plot... and it's treated in a neutral, not entirely sensational way? I've got to agree with the Margaret Atwood description of the vibe here, it has half the air of a myth or a folktale and is half just plain plausible? The bear was literally just a poor partly-domesticated creature doing its thing, and (this was apparently important to me I guess????) it is never made out to be a particularly special ~sexy bear or anything. It's not described attractively. So that leaves Lou, the MC, as just a (mildly pathetic, dissatisfied and confused and emotionally empty) woman who, as it turns out, likes the bear licking her down there with its vertically ridged tongue. Sorry not sorry, if I had to suffer learning this y'all do too.

Disclaimer: I personally am coming from a place where the last expressly Canadian book I read this year dealt with incestuous children living in a remote Newfoundland cove; and also most of my classical language courses at uni came with a bestiality trigger warning (lol), so my tolerance for weird uncomfortable themes is probably high.

So to me (through a very weird lens, yeah, obvs) this book did deal interestingly with a woman's all-encompassing loneliness, sexual and otherwise, in her life; and that terrible human tendency to desperately impose feelings and patterns on the universe and nature to find some kind of meaning in it. She craves that bear sex so badly and people warn her the bear is still a wild animal and guess what?

Show

She starts to get too close to it anyway and when she goes too far (er, trying to capitalise on the bear's erection to finally have penetrative sex with it) it doesn't go well, the bear just claws up her back because it obviously can't love her back. It's a bear.

Anyway she finds a new sense of self and independent sexuality and lease on life, sort of. And when it is not describing the bear, the novella is about an archivist who spends a summer at an old house on a tiny Canadian island sorting out a collection of dusty VE books, being isolated and thinking about the romantic poets (and "getting high on Trelawny", loooooool) and swimming. These are kind of my weaknesses. (You know that line about "people who think that the ending of Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019) is a takeaway about female empowerment would absolutely successfully be indoctrinated into a cult"? Because, yeah, for most of this novel I was kind of drawn in and seeing the appeal of the lifestyle........... that said, I would just like to publicly affirm that in spite of that, I would not, and never will, choose to fuck a bear.)

So, this was weird and bad and uncomfortable, but did not make me rage as some books do? Do not @ me.

In summary?

  

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look ANOTHER beautiful bee!set <3