Bear
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Bear
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Narrated by:
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Victoria Carr
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Written by:
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Marian Engel
About this listen
The winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, Marian Engel’s most famous - and most controversial - novel tells the unforgettable story of a woman transformed by a primal, erotic relationship.
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 19th-century colonel. Eager to investigate the estate’s curious history, she is shocked to discover that the island has one other inhabitant: 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. As provocative and powerful now as when it was first published.
Includes a book group guide.
©1976 Marian Engel (P)2021 McClelland & StewartWhat the critics say
“A strange and wonderful book, plausible as kitchens, but shapely as a folktale, and with the same disturbing resonance.” (Margaret Atwood)
“A startlingly alive narrative of the forbidden, the unthinkable, the hardly imaginable.” (Washington Post)
“The best Canadian novel of all time.... Engel’s prose turns swiftly from the comic to lyric and back again.... In part for its extravagant strangeness, for the disruption it poses to [Canadian] tradition, Bear deserves to be celebrated.” (National Post)
What listeners say about Bear
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Bernard & Kathryn
- 2022-11-25
Oddly Real
Great characters with a message. Good flow where you are drawn into the story.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 2023-02-09
Well. That sure was something.
Picked this one up because it's internet infamous, and I'm Canadian, so I figured why not.
I wasn't at *all* prepared for how well written it is, despite knowing it had won a GG award. Definitely conveys the vibe of a remote Canadian community in a simple but beautiful/serene author's voice.
I was also extremely unprepared for this to be a feminist tale, the bear being a way to talk about relationships that put no demands on her and allowed her to approach desire on her own terms.
I don't know what to do with the fact that I really enjoyed this book, but I did.
Huh.
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