I was extremely invested in the main character Lou and her struggles with life and depression. Instead of finding something revolutionary about the past, she discovers something about herself and her future. People live their lives, make homes for themselves, and then eventually die, and the book explores these themes with mad gusto. Lou keeps expecting to find some sort of hidden treasure or deep meaning in the house she’s cataloguing but the actual reality is that people can be straightforward and simple and there’s not always more to delve into.

It’s also about the figurative ‘ghosts’ of the people left behind by the ephemera she catalogues, and it’s a lovely little exploration of the sometimes surprising simplicity of life. Although it is very slice of life, and there’s not a lot going on in it’s plot, it is very much an internal narrative concerning the struggles of life for it’s main character, and the story it tells is about her journey to self acceptance and growth. I was hooked on the narrative from the first page. The prose in Bear is absolutely breathtaking. It uses the word ‘Indians’ for First Nations people, and has some insensitive racial attitudes. I will note that this book was written in 1976. Taking place deep in the forests of Ontario, it gives a rather emotionally compelling depiction of what rough life in the wild is like for many (though most probably get by with a whole lot less bear-fucking) It won the Governor General’s Literary Award in 1976, and while it’s content is certainly shocking and controversial, it remains a highly praised piece, and is considered by many to be a quintessential piece of Canadian literature due to it’s use of environment and wilderness in it’s prose and narrative.

Warnings: bestiality, depression, suicide mention, use of racial slurīear is a literary erotic novel about a woman who enters into a sexual relationship with a bear. What she discovers will change her life forever. Irresistibly, Lou is led along a path of emotional and sexual self-awakening, as she explores the limits of her own animal nature. Lou’s imagination is soon overtaken by the island’s past occupants, whose deep fascination with bears gradually becomes her own. Eager to investigate the estate’s curious history, she is shocked to discover that the island has one other inhabitant: a bear. 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 nineteenth-century colonel. Lou is a lonely librarian who spends her days in the dusty archives of the Historical Institute.

Bear by marian engel pages