The Bear
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3.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $26.99
Publisher Description
From National Book Award in Fiction finalist Andrew Krivak comes a gorgeous fable of Earth’s last two human inhabitants, and a girl’s journey home
In an Edenic future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen.
A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature’s dominion.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
At first glance, Andrew Krivak’s novel appears to be a straightforward story of postapocalyptic survival. The Bear is that, but it’s so much more. The book tells the story of an unnamed girl and her father, who seem to be the last remaining humans on earth, where only a few artifacts remain of the society that preceded them. When the girl is forced to learn to live on her own, she receives help from an unlikely source. This timely, emotional fable about the dual powers of nature and human endurance is profound in its simplicity. Like all the best fables, the wisdom of Krivak’s tale lingered long after we finished it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With artistry and grace, National Book Award finalist Krivak (The Sojourn) offers a story of endurance and a return to life with nature in a postapocalyptic world, where an unnamed father and daughter are the only remaining humans on earth. The father teaches his child the rudiments of survival hunting, fishing, and other life lessons preparing her for a time when she will someday have to manage without him. That day comes sooner than expected, when, on one of their forays away from the protected mountain home he and his now deceased wife had constructed before their daughter's birth, he is bitten by an animal and soon after dies from infection. Then, the book takes a mystical turn when a bear befriends the girl, now 12, helping her recover from her father's death and teaching her where to find fish, nuts, berries, and other kinds of sustenance as they make the arduous trip back to her home, so she can inter her father's bones on the mountaintop where her mother's remains are buried. Krivak delivers a transcendent journey into a world where all living things humans, animals, trees coexist in magical balance, forever telling each other's unique stories. This beautiful and elegant novel is a gem.
Customer Reviews
Hard to bear
2.5 stars
Author
American of Slovak ancestry. Teaches writing. National Book Award finalist for his first novel The Sojourn (2011). This is his third.
Plot
Unnamed young girl and her unnamed Dad are, or appear to be, the last surviving humans in a dystopian future following a presumed, but unspecified, apocalypse. Dad tells his gal stories about bears, takes up to see her mother’s grave at the top of a nearby mountain which looks like a bear, points out the constellations (Ursa Major and Orion feature prominently), and shows her how to catch her dinner the Bear Grylls way. Did I mention they see a bear come down to catch fish in the lake they live beside? Do you see a pattern emerging? Anyhow, girl and Dad head off hunting, Dad gets bit, then gets septic, then croaks. She survives various travails with the assistance of, you guessed it, a talking bear, unnamed of course. We can safely rule out Humphrey B, which leaves us with Winnie, Daddo, and Yogi, but I digress. This is magic realism, not kids’ TV. Eventually, the girl finds her way back to base, such as it is, then schlepps her old man’s bones up the mountain to bury them next to Mom. She gets help from the bear, which then wanders away, as bears are wont to do. Years later, the girl, now an old woman herself, croaks and a descendent of the bear (we’re led to believe he’s a descendent at least) schlepps her bones up the mountain. The end.
Characters
Girl with bow and arrow, Dad (for a while), bear or bears, assorted other wildlife
Narrative
Third person. Lots of high falutin’ descriptive stuff.
Prose
Mr Krivak’s prose gets rave reviews. He’s a talented writer, sure enough, but I’m not sure what distinguishes him from many others. I must be missing something.
Bottom line
A somewhat less depressing, but duller version of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.