Bear

“A quietly sensual, feminist story.”—The New Yorker

Lou is a shy and secretive twenty-seven-year-old librarian living a lonely life in her dusty basement office. When she is summoned to a remote Canadian island to inventory the estate of the recently deceased Colonel Cary, she discovers the colonel had left a secret amongst his possessions: a bear.

Alone on the island, Lou sinks her fingers into the massive bear’s fur and is overcome by an obsessive passion—one that breaks an ancient taboo and one that could very well be deadly.

First published in 1976, Marian Engel’s Bear won the Canadian Governor General’s Award and quickly became one of the country’s most famous and controversial novels. Bear has retained its power to shock and unsettle, but also to move readers with its unexpected tale of a young woman’s journey to a deeper understanding of herself.

Critical Praise for Bear

“Bear is a strange and wonderful book . . . shapely as a folktale, and with the same disturbing resonance.” —Margaret Atwood

“A surrealist story which draws you in slowly, with the fantasy of a Guillermo del Toro film and the grinning darkness of an Ottessa Moshfegh novel.” —Esquire