We're excited about The Bear at RPL!. Until the State inter-library loan program resumes selecting titles for our book discussion groups now means confirming availability in Hoopla e-book format so that multiple participants can access copies to read before our meetings. Hoopla has a consistently great depth of materials, but once in a while you find a real prize, and that is the case with Andrew Krivak's The Bear.
By chance, I picked up and read a copy only to later find out it was the August selection for our book discussion group. This intriguing book has become a 2020 favorite for me, and an easy recommendation. I'm sure our book club readers will enjoy it too.
In The Bear, author Krivak creates a post-apocalyptic tale like none other in my experience. Think Cormac McCarthy's The Road but switch the main human characters to a father and daughter, get rid of the road, and really any other humans at all--then add some hope [and a little magical realism].
Andrew Krivak offers a stylistic novel in The Bear with a spare but eloquent use of language and an obvious knowledge of the natural world with a descriptive ability to illustrate its power and beauty.
Whatever cataclysm has befallen humanity, it is so far distant in time, that the planet has rebounded and civilization is a trace memory. The man and his only child navigate a pristine wilderness existence. Their annual summer pilgrimage to a stone memorial atop the mountain that stands alone serves tribute to the memory of the girl's mother who died not long after her child's Solstice birth.
Father guides daughter in the crafts and rhythms of harmonious existence in their world, commemorating each passing Solstice with heartfelt gifts offering practical tools, glimpses of memory, and keys to surviving. He also imparts the best of human memory in the books he has retained through his family's history, but ultimately seals his fate by retaining a false sense of value in the more material shards of civilization.
During a long journey to the sea to prepare salt for their stores, the father is drawn to the book's only hint of any earlier culture--represented by a dark labyrinth of eroding walls. He had made this trip once before with the girl's mother and knew this place to be an intriguing danger. Against his own best judgement and his daughter's better instincts, he is drawn deeper into the depths of history seeking useful remnants. Just after he finds a piece of mirror [a reflection of mortal darkness?] he is struck a vicious bite by an unidentified animal.
This pivotal passage sets the course for the remainder of their journey to the sea, and in fact for the rest of the book. In the struggles that follow, the daughter experiences a true immersion into nature and legend. Tales imparted to her earlier in life play out in a reality formed from the ultimate power of love, memory and the natural world.
As a father of two daughters and a lover of the New Hampshire outdoors , I found many relatable elements in the novel. In learning more about the author, I discovered that he spends time and indeed found inspiration here in our state. Writing and exploring in the Southwestern part of New Hampshire in the shadow of Mount Monadnock, Krivak absorbed the book's settings and natural connection [our Mt. Monadnock actually lent its name to the geological term for an isolated bedrock elevation --or mountain that stands alone]
As I read I was also reminded of a story I had heard in NH folklore over the years. I refreshed my memory and re-discovered the story of Sarah Whitcher in Warren NH back in 1783. The three-year old spent several days lost in the deep forest but was found alive and well. She recounted how a large black dog had accompanied and protected her, even allowing her to sleep against its warm fur. Trackers confirmed that the animal that had aided Sarah was in fact a black bear.
The recent sad news of the death of
Mink the black bear who returned to the Hanover NH area after being relocated hundreds of miles away, and her three 2020 cubs that will hopefully be located and entrusted to Ben Kilham [a black bear rehabilitator that spoke last year at RPL] also reinforced the power and beauty of Andrew Krivak's
The Bear. I hope you enjoy this book as much as we did!
