5/29/2023 0 Comments Bear by marian engel pagesHe had belonged to the former owner but may be older than that, a mythic, Faulknerian bear: “There had always, it seemed, been a bear.” From this point on the narrative is pure magic, an alchemic transformation from fact into folk tale and the rich areas of the human psyche, a metamorphosis so subtle that its sexual shock is completely acceptable to us. Settled for the summer into the old house, working on the old books, she finds she is also the guardian of a bear chained up behind the house. She writes the Director: “I have an odd sense of being reborn.” Lou's job provides her with “eruditei seclusion,” an uneventful “protection against the vulgarities of the world.” Her trip to the Cary estate, willed to the Institute, to look into its possible historical value, Is a return to an area she had visited as a child with her parents. She is a lonely, still‐young woman whose “grey” life seems to her to have “a grudge against her,” and whose contacts with men have been haphazard and unrewarding weekly, passionless sex on her desk with the Director of the Institute has been her recent lot.īy Marian Engel. Lou is a bibliographer who has worked for five years for one Historical Institute. We meet Lou, protagonist of this spare, wry and altogether extraordinary novel by the Canadian writer Marian Engel, on her way in late spring to do some research on Cary Island in Northern Ontario.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |