Bear – A Defence of Reading

by Andrew Pyper, February 2013

From the article:

But we should read Bear. Not just the scholars or specialists or historians among us, but all Canadians who might secretly suspect that our literature chooses not to go into certain places. In Bear, it goes there alright.

Read the entire article at the PEN Canada website: Too Much to Bear? Appropriating the Inappropriate

 

There’s More to ‘Bear’ Than Bear Sex

There's More to Bear than Bear-sex, by Sara Bynoe

Excerpt from the article:  

 
The first thing you need to know about Marian Engel’s 1976 novel Bear is that it is about a woman who has sex with a giant bear. Not a metaphorical, figurative, concept-within-a-creature bear: a real, furry, wild brown bear. There’s more to it than that, but why bury the lead?

The second thing you need to know, however, is that this is not some fringe underground chapbook: it won the Governor General’s award—the highest Canadian honour for the literary arts—in a year in which the jury included Mordecai Richler, Margaret Laurence, and Alice Munro.

Bear Re-imagined

From the publisher: http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/hazlitt/feature/bear-re-imagined

“Bear is a strange and wonderful book, plausible as kitchens, but shapely as a folktale, and with the same disturbing resonance.” Those were the words of Margaret Atwood, in praise of Marian Engel’s Bear, perhaps the most celebrated work of fiction about, in part, a woman’s unquenchable lust for a bear.

We’re fond of Engel here at Hazlitt; it is the rare author who can turn the erotic coupling between Homo sapien and Ursus arctos into a best-selling winner of the Governor General’s Award for Literary Fiction

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October Book: Bear, by Marian Engel

Oh, good! There is a lot of stuff about this month's book, Bear, on the internet. Fun times. Let's get started, shall we?

From CBC Q this past August. Click on "listen" to hear the 15 minute discussion: 

Bearotica: Why the 1976 novel 'Bear' is actually a good read

CBC's Canadian 100:  Bear

Here is the post that started all the recent hub-bub:  WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK, CANADA?

And here is the cover that inspired the Imgur post: 

Other Books We Considered . . . .

The House Girl, Tara Conklin

The Weight of Blood, Laura McHugh

Brick Lane, Monica Ali

The Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd

The Imposter Bride, Nancy Richler

the Town that Drowned, Riel Nason

The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell

Adultery, Paulo Coelho

All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

NW, Zadie Smith

Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan

The End of Your Life Bookclub, Will Schwalbe

The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton

Orange is the New Black, Piper Kerman

The Opposite of Loneliness, Marina Keegan

Garden of Evening Mists, Tan Twan Eng

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Maggie O'Farrell

Half Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls (if you haven't already read Glass Castle)

Freeman, Leonard Pitts Jr

 

Goldfinch, Donna Tartt

Happy September! Here are this season's books

October 2014 -- Bear, by Marian Engel  

Note: there are several books called "Bear" or "the Bear". The only one we're reading is by Engel.






















November 2014 - either Joseph Boyden of these two Joseph Boyden books: Three Day Road, or The Orenda

January 2015 -- Ripper, Isabel Allende

June 2015 -- The Giver, Lois Lowry

The remaining months, the remaining books:

Three Souls, Jenny Chang 

When we read this depends on when Mary can schedule the author visit

















Fifth Business, Robertson Davies

Prisoner of Heaven, Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki

Book of Fate, Parinoush Saniee

The Children Act, Ian McEwan