Bear

By Marian Engel and Aritha van Herk

Written by Scribd Editors

Marian Engel’s most famous and controversial novel, Bear, tells the unforgettable story of Lou, a lonely librarian whose life is transformed by an unusual, primal relationship. To break her daily routine in the Historical Archives, she jumps at the chance to take a field assignment on a remote island in northern Ontario, where her summer will be spent cataloguing a library that belonged to an eccentric nineteenth-century colonel.

Excited to learn more about the estate’s curious history, she makes the shocking discovery that the only other inhabitant of the island is a bear. Her imagination is captivated by the island’s past occupants, whose fascination with bears becomes her own.

Engel was a Canadian novelist, short story and children’s fiction writer. She was the first chair of the Writer’s Union of Canada and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1982. Bear won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction in 1976.

Lou is inexorably led along a path to self-awakening, both emotional and sexual. Her discoveries will change her life forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 4, 2009
• ISBN: 9781551992921

Marian Engel

MARIAN ENGEL was born in Toronto in 1933. The acclaimed author of Bear, she is also the author of No Clouds of Glory, The Honeyman Festival, The Glassy Sea, and Lunatic Villas. Engel was a founding member of the Writers’ Union of Canada and served as its first chair. She won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Bear and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. Marian Engel died in 1985.

Reviews for Bear

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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 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 proudto 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.

[bucketofrhymes · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I dunno. I see the underlying message and trailblazing importance of this book. I just can't get past the bestiality thing.

[smetchie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book left me bewildered. It's quiet and stunning with great spaces in the writing for the reader to explore and fill.

[josh_hanagarne · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

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.

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 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)

[viccavalli · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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 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?

[boredgames · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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 within and outside of them.

[mpho3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[eloavox · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Somewhat staid, understated prose, sent hurtling along by provocative plot.

[birdo82 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.”

[polywogg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[nickelini · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[quixada_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“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 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.

[1morechapter · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

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 General’s Award1976, 141 pp.