PRAISE FOR THE BEAR:
"[A] gripping survival thriller...Cameron unspools the adventure in Anna's twitchy voice, heightening the tension...This agonizing odyssey of loss and being lost also has humor...The book's anguished yet hopeful ending provides a touching terminus...This expertly crafted novel could do for camping what Jaws did for swimming."—Richard Eisenberg, People—-
"A page turner...The Bear creates suspense out of the gap between what Anna knows and what the reader suspects...The story is laced with humor and moments of joy and triumph as well as fear and sorrow...Anna is such a compelling character...So gripping that it is hard to put the novel down."—Margaret Quamme, The Columbus Dispatch—-
"The novel, written in the honest and unfiltered voice of the young girl, is a compact, tense survival story...A thoughtful take on change and fear, and the strength we find within ourselves."—Jon Foro, Omnivoracious—-
"A vividly portrayed wilderness ordeal (poison ivy, hunger, rain, isolation) juxtaposed with glimpses of the inner resources young Anna draws upon (imagination, family, memory, hope), all seen through the eyes of a child who can express, if not entirely understand, her own resentment and protectiveness of her brother, her love and longing for her parents, her fear and empathy for the predator, and her determination to persevere...Uplifting."—Publishers Weekly, "Pick of the Week"—-
"[An] adventure with a narration that nicely captures an ordinary child's way of thinking-and of blocking out unwelcome knowledge. [A] slam-bang opening...Scary...Darkly funny...A touching epilogue...Harrowing but ultimately hopeful."—Kirkus Reviews—-
"An emotional tour de force. Claire Cameron's The Bear offers us an unforgettable child narrator who propels us through a story as unsettling as it is bone-chilling, and as suspenseful as it is moving."—Megan Abbott, author of Dare Me—-
"The Bear is a taut and touching story of how a child's love and denial become survival skills. Claire Cameron takes a fairytale situation of children pitted against the wilderness, removes the fairies, and adds a terrifying and ravenous bear. I devoured this wonderful new novel in one day."—Charlotte Rogan, author of the national bestseller The Lifeboat —-
"Claire Cameron has written a chilling, beautiful, voice-driven novel, one that will turn your blood cold, make you laugh, and remind you of all the ways you are human. Most importantly she honors the complexity of our relationship with nature, the ways we are humbled by it and tethered to it. A vivid, potent, and unforgettable novel."—Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of Birds of a Lesser Paradise—-
"Claire Cameron plunges us in to the dark terrors of the wilderness. The Bear is a survival story that is heart-pounding and moving. I devoured this book."—Tanis Rideout, author of Above All Things—-
"The Bear faultlessly captures the wonder, bewilderment, fear and self-centeredness of five-year-old Anna, and beautifully balances the darkness of her tale with a hopeful, sensitively told back story and moments when she grasps her situation with just enough clarity to shoulder her burden."—Cathy Marie Buchanan, author of The Painted Girls—-
"Thrilling and harrowing...I couldn't put this book down. And I must say that the ending was so right, I caught myself holding my breath. A remarkable novel."—Anthony De Sa, author of Kicking the Sky—-
"Harrowing suspense. The Bear is a survival thriller that is told from a child's-eye point-of-view, which is not only convincing but doubles the tension. A heartbreaking, white-knuckle read."—Andrew Pyper, author of The Demonologist—-
"The Bear is a harrowing and endlessly hopeful novel-an unforgettable hymn to the legacy of familial love. Claire Cameron is alive to mind of the child. Her assured evocation of soon-to-be-six-year-old Anna hits all the right notes: the connective web of association and analogy; the permeable skin between truth and story; the immersive experience of time. This is subtle magic-the transportive spell of a pitch-perfect narrative voice. We witness the unfolding of events through Anna's eyes while simultaneously watching over her small shoulder, hearts in our mouths. The Bear is no fable, gentle reader. A source of terror and lonely solace, Cameron's fur-clad villain threatens from without and from within. Like our unwilling heroine, we must be very, very brave."—Alissa York, author of Fauna—-
10/28/2013
Inspired by a fatal 1991 bear attack on a couple camping on an island in Ontario's Algonquin Park, Cameron's novel of fear and survival recounts the fictional escape from a similar attack of five-year-old Anna and her two-year-old brother, Alex (nicknamed "Stick" for his sticky fingers). Anna's narrative begins midattack after her father has tossed her and her brother into the storage chest they call "Coleman." Squished in the darkness between Stick and her teddy bear, Anna sees a black furry animal through a crack, but all she can picture is her next-door neighbor's dog Snoopy. In daylight, she climbs out of Coleman to discover what remains of her father and to catch her mother's last words urging her to put her brother in the canoe and paddle away. What follows is a vividly portrayed wilderness ordeal (poison ivy, hunger, rain, isolation) juxtaposed with glimpses of the inner resources young Anna draws upon (imagination, family, memory, hope), all seen through the eyes of a child who can express, if not entirely understand, her own resentment and protectiveness of her brother, her love and longing for her parents, her fear and empathy for the predator, and her determination to persevere. Upping the emotional ante, Cameron shows the children's rescue, Anna's encounter in a hospital with a child psychologist, and, years later, her return to the island with Alex as adults. Intensity, as well as Anna's voice, make reading this book a challenging but ultimately uplifting experience. (Feb.)
★ 01/01/2014
Drawing on a real-life tragedy that befell a couple in Ontario's Algonquin Park in the 1990s, Cameron tells the story of five-year-old Anna and her toddler brother, Stick, who narrowly escape a horrific bear attack that kills their mother and father. The concerns of the young narrator—being good, remaining brave when her parents and her teddy bear are gone, how annoying her brother is—are an engaging, focused lens through which to view events in the novel. Anna doesn't understand the death of her parents until much later. As Cameron points out, humans tend to look for mistakes made by the victims in such cases, because this makes us feel safe as long as we do not make those errors. Unfortunately, animals in the wild can be unpredictable. VERDICT This is a fast, compelling read for nature lovers, though it's not the book to take with you while camping if you plan to sleep at all. Cameron's first novel, The Line Painter, won the Northern Lit Award from the Ontario Library Service and was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Crime Writing Award. [See Prepub Alert, 8/12/13.]—Gwen Vredevoogd, Marymount Univ. Libs., Arlington, VA
2013-11-03
In Cameron's second novel (The Line Painter, 2011), a 5-year-old girl relates her struggle for survival after a bear kills her parents while they're camping on Bates Island in Canada's Algonquin Park. Any contemporary writer depicting extreme events through the eyes of a child must contend with the formidable precedent of Emma Donoghue's Room (2010), and Cameron bears the comparison fairly well. In contrast to Donoghue's multilayered portrait of adaptation and resistance, Cameron crafts a more straightforward adventure with a narration that nicely captures an ordinary child's way of thinking--and of blocking out unwelcome knowledge. In the slam-bang opening, Anna Whyte wakes in the tent she shares with her 2-year-old brother, Stick, to hear their mother yelling. Their father rips open the tent and hustles the children into the animal-proof chest where they keep their food. A big "black dog" sniffs around the closed chest but can't get in; some time later, Anna emerges to find her father's severed foot in a shoe and her dying mother on the ground, urging her to "[g]et into the canoe and paddle away." Anna lures Stick into the canoe with cookies, and they manage to float across to the park mainland. They have no food or water; their pajamas are soaked; at one particularly scary moment, Anna spots the bear at the island's shore sniffing the air for their scent. Her guileless account shows her trying to be brave and take care of Stick, even though "I am not old enough to be a babysitter." One darkly funny scene shows Anna acting like a typical older sibling as she keeps all the berries for herself, until finally prompted to share with Stick by the vague understanding that this time, food is a matter of life and death. Anna's recovery is rather sketchily developed in the post-rescue scenes, but a touching epilogue 20 years after the ordeal brings home just how traumatized she was yet suggests that she can achieve some sort of closure. Harrowing but ultimately hopeful.
