The Bear
Andrew Krivik, 2020
Bellevue Literary Press
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781942658702
Summary
A gorgeous fable of Earth’s last two human inhabitants, and a girl’s journey home
In an Edenic future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb.
The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind.
But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen.
A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature’s dominion. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Andrew Krivak is the author of three novels: The Bear (2020); The Signal Flame (2017), a Chautauqua Prize finalist; and The Sojourn (2011), a National Book Award finalist and winner of both the Chautauqua Prize and Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Krivvak is also the author of A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life (2008), a memoir about his eight years in the Jesuit Order, and editor of The Letters of William Carlos Williams to Edgar Irving Williams, 1902–1912, which received the Louis L. Martz Prize.
Krivak lives with his wife and three children in Somerville, Massachusetts, and Jaffrey, New Hampshire. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review) [Written] With artistry and grace…. Krivak delivers a transcendent journey into a world where all living things—humans, animals, trees—coexist in magical balance, forever telling each other’s unique stories. This beautiful and elegant novel is a gem.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Most postapocalyptic novels bury us in blood or debris, but Krivak offers a completely different understanding of humans at the end of the line.… Poignant but not tragic, this … story shows that there's no loneliness in this world when we are one with nature. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
[Krivak’s] sentences are polished stones of wonder.… The elegiac tone reflects what is lost and what will be lost, an enchantment as if Wendell Berry had reimagined Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
Booklist
(Starred review) A moving post-apocalyptic fable for grown-ups.… Krivak's slender story assures us that even without humans, the world will endure… It makes for a splendid thought exercise and a lovely fable-cum-novel. Ursula K. Le Guin would approve. An effective, memorable tale.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
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