Book Review: THE BEAR BY Claire Cameron

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A powerfully suspenseful story narrated by a young girl who must fend for herself and her little brother after a brutal bear attack.

this is a riveting story of love, courage, and survival.

Book Summary

The fictional escape from a similar attack of five-year-old Anna and her two-year-old brother, Alex, is described in Cameron's book of fear and survival, which was inspired by a fatal 1991 bear attack on a couple camping on an island in Ontario's Algonquin Park (nicknamed "Stick" for his sticky fingers). After her father has thrown her and her brother into the storage chest they refer to as "Coleman," Anna's story starts in the middle of an attack. Anna sees a black furry animal through a crack while crammed in the shadows between Stick and her teddy bear, but all she can think of is her next-door neighbor's dog Snoopy.

The Bear: A Novel

She leaves Coleman in the daylight to see what's left of her father and to hear her mother's final instructions for her to pack her brother into the canoe and paddle away. What comes next is a vividly described wilderness ordeal (poison ivy, hunger, rain, and isolation) contrasted with glimpses of the inner resources young Anna draws upon (imagination, family, memory, and hope). All of this is seen through the eyes of a child who can express, if not fully understand, her own resentment and protectiveness of her brother, her love and longing for her parents, her fear and empathy for the predator, and her determination to persevere.

The children's rescue, Anna's encounter with a child psychologist in a hospital, and, years later, her return to the island with Alex as an adult all serve to up the emotional ante. This book's intensity and Anna's voice make reading it a difficult but ultimately uplifting experience.

Review

Jeffrey Swystun:

In February, 2014 The Globe and Mail recommended three new books from Canadian authors as must reads. These were The Troop by Nick Cutter, The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison and Cameron's The Bear. I have now read and reviewed them all and the three in total receive seven stars. If this is the happening crop of Canadian fiction we have low expectations indeed.

The Bear is part cathartic exercise for Cameron who worked in Ontario's Algonquin Park when a truly horrendous bear attack took place. That event was the catalyst for the novel. I admit the premise she establishes is intriguing and has echoes of Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. However, Cameron employs a much younger girl and her musings and language soon irritate rather than engage. Some reviewers have pointed out the child's speech is inconsistent and uneven throughout.

My complaint is in plot and hard to share without spoiling events. Suffice it to say that any horror and suspense is lost early in the book and I was left wondering if this should have been a short story, a nonfiction account of the real event or a Young Adult directed effort.

Karen:

This was the perfect book to read directly after Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park, which had a huge chapter about death by bears in yellowstone and how to (hopefully) avoid being killed by them. in the author's note of the bear, cameron says that her inspiration for this novel was the true story of raymond jakubauskas and carola frehe, who were killed by a bear on Bates Island on Lake Opeongo in Algonquin Park, nearly three thousand miles of wilderness situated two hundred fifty miles northeast of Toronto. there was no explanation for the attack; they did all the things that Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park book recommended you do to avoid bear-interest, and yet, they were still attacked and devoured.

cameron takes their story and adds two children into the mix: anna, aged 5 and "stick," aged 2. forced to listen to her parents get attacked by a giant black bear without really understanding what is happening, anna emerges from the cooler where she and her brother were stashed at the beginning of the attack and stumbles upon her dying mother who begs anna to take her brother, get into the canoe, and get off the island, to "wait for them" on the mainland.

after some confused resistance, she does just that, and they make it across the water and wait on the opposite shore, through hunger and heat and mosquitoes as anna tries to keep stick from wandering off, entertaining him and waiting for an adult to come and tell them what to do next.

the story is entirely narrated by 5-year-old anna, so it is not a cohesive, linear narrative. it is more stream-of-consciousness writing, with all anna's confusion about her situation, and a focus on the inconsequential details making up the the small, selfish but good-intentioned perspective of a little girl. she both loves and resents her younger brother, and tries to keep her eye on him and keep him out of trouble, but she is easily frustrated by the grown-up burdens she is not old enough to assume.

i personally loved the voice. it seems to me to be a very realistic depiction of what a child would be thinking in the midst of a tragedy she doesn't quite comprehend. she keeps waiting for her parents to come to her rescue, stumbling into and narrowly avoiding other dangers unknowingly, and the story is a combination of memories of her parents and their relationship (another thing she only half-understands) and her frustration with her more immediate surroundings.

it is occasionally funny, sometimes sad, and pretty tense, because the reader knows more than anna, and so knows that there is more to fear than she herself realizes. i liked the narrow focus, anna's fixation on the barbie dolls her mother will not let her have, her quick-change love-hate of her brother, the unusual connections she makes and the way she expresses these thoughts.

kids in peril always makes good reading for me, and this is one of the better ones i have read. someday, you can read it, too!!

Ruby Granger:

After witnessing the aftermath of a bear attack on their parents after camping in Algonquin Park, Anna (5) and Stick (2) are told to get onto the canoe and escape. This is a haunting and yet beautiful story about Anna's love and instinctive protection for her brother. Cameron also explores the mental anguish which would surely follow such an incident in such a young child, using the broken, childish narrative of Anna to try and understand what is happening.

Praise for THE BEAR

“A tender, terrifying, poignant ride.” —O Magazine

Longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize)

“This expertly crafted novel could do for camping what JAWS did for swimming.” 4/4 stars —PEOPLE MAGAZINE

“Stylistically impressive and deeply moving.” — GLAMOUR

“The Bear had me up all night, and when I finally put it down I knew that I wouldn’t forget Anna and her little brother Stick for a long time. Claire Cameron is an absolute master in letting us feel grief and loss by never using those words. The ending is very moving and offers us real consolation at the same time.” — HERMAN KOCH, author of The Dinner

“Remarkable and riveting” —MONTREAL GAZETTE

“A gripping, affecting story that reads like a hybrid of Henry James’s What Maisie Knew and Margaret Atwood’s Survival.” —MACLEAN’S

“Even more haunting the second time around.” —THE INDEPENDENT

“F***ing terrifying”—FLARE MAGAZINE

“Cameron’s resonant plot and Anna’s unforgettable voice add up to a novel destined to stay with you long after you’ve chewed through it.” — THE GLOBE & MAIL

Chosen as PUBLISHERS WEEKLY “pick of the week”

Starred review in LIBRARY JOURNAL

One of The NATIONAL POST’s 25 most anticipated Canadian books for 2014

“[A] narration that nicely captures an ordinary child’s way of thinking—and of blocking out unwelcome knowledge … a slam-bang opening … a touching epilogue … Harrowing but ultimately hopeful.” — KIRKUS REVIEWS

“This book [is] a challenging but ultimately uplifting experience.” — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“A hauntingly beautiful novel about the unspoken bond between mothers and children.” — MIRIAM TOEWS, author of A Complicated Kindness, The Flying Troutmans and Irma Voth.

“An emotional tour de force. Claire Cameron’s The Bear offers us an unforgettable child-narrator who propels us through a story as unsettling as it is bone-chilling, and as suspenseful as it is moving.” —MEGAN ABBOTT, author of Dare Me

“Claire Cameron has written a chilling, beautiful, voice-driven novel, one that will turn your blood cold, make you laugh, and remind you of all the ways you are human. Most importantly she honors the complexity of our relationship with nature, the ways we are humbled by it and tethered to it. A vivid, potent, and unforgettable novel.” —MEGAN MAYHEW BERGMAN, author of Birds of a Lesser Paradise

“Claire Cameron plunges us in to the dark terrors of the wilderness. The Bear is a survival story that is heart-pounding and moving. I devoured this book.” —TANIS RIDEOUT, author of Above All Things

“A harrowing and endlessly hopeful novel…. [Cameron’s] assured evocation of soon-to-be-six-year-old Anna hits all the right notes. We witness the unfolding of events through Anna’s eyes while simultaneously watching over her small shoulder, hearts in our mouths.“ —ALISSA YORK, author of Fauna

“The Bear is a taut and touching story of how a child’s love and denial become survival skills. Claire Cameron takes a fairytale situation of children pitted against the wilderness, removes the fairies, and adds a terrifying and ravenous bear. I devoured this wonderful new novel in one day—if I can use the word ‘devoured’ for a book about a bear.” —CHARLOTTE ROGAN, author of the national bestseller The Lifeboat

“The Bear faultlessly captures the wonder, bewilderment, fear and self-centeredness of five-year-old Anna, and beautifully balances the darkness of her tale with a hopeful, sensitively told back story and moments when she grasps her situation with just enough clarity to shoulder her burden.” — CATHY MARIE BUCHANAN, bestselling author of The Painted Girls

“Thrilling and harrowing…I couldn’t put this book down. And I must say that the ending was so right, I caught myself holding my breath. A remarkable novel.” — Giller-nominated author ANTHONY DE SA, author of Kicking the Sky

“The Bear is a survival thriller that is told from a child’s-eye point-of-view, which is not only convincing but doubles the tension. A heartbreaking, white-knuckle read.” —ANDREW PYPER bestselling author of The Demonologist

About the Author

Website

THE LAST NEANDERTHAL was published in April 2017 by Little Brown in the US, Doubleday in Canada, and in Italian by Società Editrice Milanese (SEM). It is a bestseller in Canada, was featured in The New York Times, called, “one of the most realistic novels about the twilight of the Neanderthals thus far written,” by archaeologist and paleoanthropologist John Shea, and a finalist for the 2017 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. It sold in eleven territories.

Claire Cameron’s second novel, THE BEAR, was long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, sold in ten territories, and is a number 1 bestseller in Canada. It won the Northern Lit Award from the Ontario Library Service, which her first novel, THE LINE PAINTER, also won.

She has led canoe trips in Algonquin Park and worked as an instructor for Outward Bound, teaching mountaineering, climbing, and whitewater rafting in Oregon and beyond. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian,Lenny Letter, and Salon. She lives in Toronto.

Neanderthals: They’re Just like Us in The New York Times

10 Women to Watch in 2017 from BookPage

Starred review from Publishers Weekly

A Word on Words - Interview with J.T. Ellison on Nashville Public Television

Interview on The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers

The Millions – Life-Long Obsessions: The Millions Interviews Claire Cameron

The Globe and Mail – I’d want to try eating mammoth

Books Updates Reviews

Before getting THE BEAR from AMAZON, i was preparing for an exam, so a friend of mine introduced me to it.

She was like You are gonna love this …, it Per...Perfect.

So I'll say it was really perfect. I love the narration, the scene it create while reading, at every last page, I'm always eager to know what the next out come would be. Like it was one of the best

In conclusion, this epic and fantastic book THE BEAR , has a thrilling effect on the reader. Rating 4 out of 5.