By MARIAN ENGEL (Atheneum; 1976)

It’s hysterical how the critical blurbs decorating the jacket of this, the first American edition of Marian Engel’s BEAR, tiptoe around the book’s true subject matter.  Stressed in those blurbs is the “sense of communion with all living creatures” and how “imagination and the heart create a tender world out of the most uncompromising beginnings.”  I’ll confess I missed most of the socio-ecological concerns suggested by those blurbs, with BEAR ultimately conveying just what it offers: a story about a woman shtupping a bear.

… a story about a woman shtupping a bear.

No, this isn’t a smut novel (although it emerged from an era when bestiality-themed porn lit was quite common), but, rather, a highly literary exercise that’s now considered the pinnacle of its late author’s work, and an enduring classic of Canadian literature.  As such it occupies a rarified subgenre that includes Margaret Atwood’s SURFACING (1972), involving lone women going quietly bonkers in the Canadian wilderness.

… it occupies a rarified subgenre that includes Margaret Atwood’s SURFACING (1972), involving lone women going quietly bonkers in the Canadian wilderness.

BEAR is notable for its frankness.  Unlike the more pretentious Atwood, Engel keeps her description-based narrative straightforward, naturalistic and grounded in recognizable thoughts and emotions.

The woman in question is Lou, a reclusive librarian summoned to a remote Island to spend a summer cataloging the belongings of the late Colonel Jocelyn Cary.  Among those possessions is a chained-up bear the Colonel kept as a pet.  This wild but extremely well-behaved critter proves something of a nuisance at first (Lou being “not fond of animals”), but as the primitive existence of life on the island, and its overwhelming solitude, weighs on her Lou finds friendly companionship and, inevitably, sexual fulfillment with “Bear.”

Unlike the more pretentious Atwood, Engel keeps her description-based narrative straightforward, naturalistic and grounded in recognizable thoughts and emotions.

But Bear remains a dangerous animal, as is proven when during an especially frisky lovemaking session it slashes Lou’s back.  Eventually the summer ends and Lou departs the island, leaving her nonhuman lover behind.

I’m not sure the behavior of Bear, who seems impossibly docile and human-like, is entirely realistic (the dedication, to one John Rich, assures us that this fellow “knows how animals think”), but the woman-bear relationship overall is convincingly handled.  Lou’s behavior is grounded in, again, recognizable behavior, as when early on in the book Lou and Bear go for a swim in an icy river and she’s reminded of “a time when, in a fit of lonely desperation, she had picked up a man in the street.”  Later, when she attempts to dance with Bear, she recalls herself as “a half child in the school gym, being held to a man’s body for the first time, flushed, confused, and guilty.”

So yes, on balance this is indeed a good book, and one that is, perhaps, deserving of its classic status.  Yet BEAR is also short and rather pointless (if any Great Lesson is learned in the course of this nutty odyssey, I missed it), and ultimately about as resonant as those aforementioned smut books about women and animals.  BEAR and COUSIN’S ANIMAL URGE (1981): not a perfect match, but these books aren’t as dissimilar as they might seem.