Andrew Krivak

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 backhome 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.

The Bear

Alli

for all the others who had once claimed dominion and name and believed they would be remembered as a result lay inert and buried in the ground.

LibraryReads Pick! BuzzFeed “Most Anticipated Books of the Year” selection Buzz Books by Publishers Lunch selection From National Book Award in Fiction finalist Andrew Krivak comes 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. Andrew Krivak is the author of two previous novels: The Signal Flame, a Chautauqua Prize finalist, and The Sojourn, a National Book Award finalist and winner of both the Chautauqua Prize and Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He lives with his wife and three children in Somerville, Massachusetts, and Jaffrey, New Hampshire, in the shadow of Mount Monadnock, which inspired much of the landscape in The Bear.

Beautifully written fable of grief and the beauty of the natural world. It’s very simple and doesn’t try to be too much but still is easy to escape into. Great single day read for a day spent out camping.

Laura Wilson

Nick Gracilla

What first strikes me when reading Krivak is his clear, simple, yet somehow not spare writing style. There's no direct dialogue here, a choice which sets the entire tale another step further remote from the reader, even as the fundamental storylines ring increasingly familiar: preparation for winter. The neverending ache of loss. Memory as memorial. The remarkable technical details of living, trapping, fishing, building, sewing, and making in a world where human influence has come to an end are an added bonus. An oddly appropriate book as we awaken from a winter pandemic slumber.

I picked this book up randomly at the library & WOW what a beautiful story of life, death and the power of the natural world. This small book is filled with rich and beautiful descriptions of nature while it centers around a father & daughter surviving as the last people on the planet. You follow the journey of this young girl learning how to live and survive off of the land from her father and then you see her put all that she has learned into action when she ends up on her own, far from home.

Sunyi Dean

A beautiful, surreal, post-apocalyptic fairytale. Came recommended to me by Jeff Vandermeer via Facebook and although I was a little doubtful at the start, it rapidly grew on me. 

Note that this is very short, perhaps novelette length or short novella.

Jeremy Anderberg

3.5 stars 

“You’re hungry, I know, said the dreambear, but you need to be hungry for more than food. More than sleep. . . . Be hungry for what you have yet to do while you’re awake.”

It’s nearly impossible to not immediately think of this book as a parallel story to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It’s a fast read set in a post-apocalyptic world, the dialogue is sort of clipped in that nobody is getting into long monologues, and the two primary characters are a father and his child.

Father and daughter are alone in the world—the last of the humans. Whatever caused the end of humanity (it’s not dwelled upon in the story) has not destroyed the natural world though. These two live a caveman-like existence with just a few remnants of the old world: some tools, a few books, a mother’s comb.

The first half is sort of boilerplate survival/outdoorsy writing. Father does his best to teach young daughter the ways of living off the land. It’s beautifully done, but not terribly unique—like I said, at this point it was pretty much The Road without the marauding baby-eaters.

But the second half makes things rather interesting. In her teenage years, the girl embarks on a long journey to the ocean to procure some salt. After a run-in with the brutal face of tragedy, the girl gets some unlikely help from a bear in finding her way home. To me, the bear seemed to be a God-like character, though not in an obvious Aslan way. It’s a really intriguing and moving relationship they forge, and the girl ultimately comes to realize she’s beyond capable of forging her own path.

The Bear was a memorable read that offered a lot of beautiful (and detailed) meditations on survival, memory, and the natural world. I liked The Road better, if forced to make the comparative judgment call, but this is certainly a worthwhile novel.

The Bear

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