Bear

by Marian Engel

Overview

Controversial, unsettling, shocking. This is the story of a 27-year-old, lonely, woman who, alone on an island, who discovers an obsessive passion—one that breaks an ancient taboo and that could very well become deadly. “A quietly sensual, feminist story.”—The New Yorker

Lou, a shy and secretive young librarian is called to a remote Canadian island to inventory the estate of the recently deceased Colonel Cary. In a cabin on the island, she discovers the colonel had a secret as well. A bear is chained inside. Fascinated, Lou brings the bear into the house and slowly gains the animal’s trust. She sinks her fingers into the bear’s fur—and soon realizes her darkest desire is for this large, powerful animal to be her lover.

But there’s more to the story than the price to be paid for forbidden passion. This novel by award-winning author Marian Engel works within the logic of a fever dream as the young woman comes to an even greater, and unexpected, understanding of herself.

Bear was first published in 1976 and won the Canadian Governor General’s Award for English-language fiction. The novel has retained its power to shock, disturb, and move readers today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780879236670
Publisher:	David R. Godine, Publisher
Publication date:	10/01/2002
Series:	Nonpareil Books
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.16(h) x 0.36(d)

About the Author

Marian Engel was a Canadian novelist and a founding member of the Writers' Union of Canada. Her most famous, and controversial, novel was Bear, a story of erotic love between a librarian and a bear.

Read an Excerpt

1  In the winter, she lived like a mole, buried deep in her office, digging among maps and manuscripts. She lived close to her work and shopped on the way between her apartment and the Institute, scurrying hastily through the tube of winter from refuge to refuge, wasting no time. She did not like cold air on her skin. Her basement room at the Institute was close to the steam pipes and protectively lined with books, wooden filing cabinets and very old, brown, framed photographs of unlikely people: General Booth and somebody's Grandma Town, France from the air in 1915, groups of athletes and sappers; things people brought her because she would not throw them out, because it was her job to keep them. "Don't throw it out," people said. "Lug it all down to the Historical Institute. They might want it. He might have been more of a somebody than we thought, even if he did drink." So she had retrieved from their generosity a Christmas card from the trenches with a celluloid boot on it, a parchment poem to Chingacousy Township graced with a wreath of human hair, a signed photograph of the founder of a seed company long ago absorbed by a competitor. Trivia which she used to remind herself that long ago the outside world had existed, that there was more to today than yesterday with its yellowing paper and browning ink and maps that tended to shatter when they were unfolded. Yet, when the weather turned and the sun filtered into even her basement windows, when the sunbeams were laden with spring dust and the old tin ashtrays began to stink of a winter of nicotine and contemplation, the flaws in her plodding private world were made public, even to her, for although she loved old shabby things, things that had already been loved and suffered, objects with a past, when she saw that her arms were slug- pale and her fingerprints grained with old, old ink, that the detritus with which she bedizened her bulletin boards was curled and valueless, when she found that her eyes would no longer focus in the light, she was always ashamed, for the image of the Good Life long ago stamped on her soul was quite different from this, and she suffered in contrast. This year, however, she was due to escape the shaming moment of realization. The mole would not be forced to admit that it had been intended for an antelope. The Director found her among her files and rolled maps and, standing solemnly under a row of family portraits donated to the Institute on the grounds that it would be impious to hang them, as was then fashionable, in the bathroom, announced that the Cary estate had at last been settled in favour of the Institute. He looked at her, she looked at him: it had happened. For once, instead of Sunday school attendance certificates, old emigration documents, envelopes of unidentified farmers' Sunday photographs and withered love letters, something of real value had been left them. "You'd better get packing, Lou," he said, "and go up and do a job on it. The change will do you good."

Editorial Reviews

Bear is a strange and wonderful book...shapely as a folktale, and with the same disturbing resonance.”
—Margaret Atwood

“A quietly sensual, feminist story.”
—The New Yorker

From the Publisher