That Just Happened!

Engel, Marian.  Bear.  McLelland and Stewart. (1976)

After five years buried like a mole amid the decaying maps and manuscripts of an historical institute, Lou is given a welcome field assignment: to catalogue a nineteenth-century library, improbably located in an octagonal house on a remote island in northern Ontario. Eager to reconstruct the estate’s curious history, she is unprepared for her discovery that the island has one other inhabitant: a bear.

Lou’s imagination is soon overtaken by the estate’s historical occupants, whose fascination with bear lore becomes her own. Irresistibly, Lou is led along a path of emotional and sexual self-discovery, as she explores the limits of her own animal nature through her bizarre and healing relationship with the bear.

A daring and compelling novel, Marian Engel’s Bear won the Governor General’s Award for 1976

From the Publisher

 I was with the Publishers until the second paragraph.  I wouldn’t necessarily say that they accurately capture what the book is about.  In one word, it is about: Bestiality.  Yeah.  Lou’s relationship with the bear is a sexual one.  I understand that the author was probably going more for exploring Lou’s sexual awakening and her mental fragility as a single woman.  Perhaps, given the time, I will even stretch to say that the author was commenting on the sexual awakening happening in society.  The Seventies was definitely a time of excess, but this kind of free love may be more appropriate to pair with the mind-bending psychotics of the Sixties.   So really…I got nothing.  Reading this book was disturbing and, I felt, shocking for the sake of being shocking. 

I did a bit of research on this book and the author.  Although it is stated by many that Engel was a prolific writer, I cannot find a single thing beyond the plot summary.  What does it all mean?  What does her relationship symbolize?  Why did I read a book about a woman doing “it” with a bear?  *sigh*  The answers are not to be found.

Themes are self-discovery, relationships, sexuality.

Richler, Mordecai.  St. Urbain’s Horseman. McClelland & Stewart. (2001).

St. Urbain’s Horseman is a complex, moving, and wonderfully comic evocation of a generation consumed with guilt – guilt at not joining every battle, at not healing every wound. Thirty-seven-year-old Jake Hersh is a film director of modest success, a faithful husband, and a man in disgrace. His alter ego is his cousin Joey, a legend in their childhood neighbourhood in Montreal. Nazi-hunter, adventurer, and hero of the Spanish Civil War, Joey is the avenging horseman of Jake’s impotent dreams. When Jake becomes embroiled in a scandalous trial in London, England, he puts his own unadventurous life on trial as well, finding it desperately wanting as he steadfastly longs for the Horseman’s glorious return. Irreverent, deeply felt, as scathing in its critique of social mores as it is uproariously funny, St. Urbain’s Horsemanconfirms Mordecai Richler’s reputation as a pre-eminent observer of the hypocrisies and absurdities of modern life.

From the Publisher

I don’t get it. I mean, I get that it was about class distinction, religious persecution, personal crisis and family relationships, but other than the overriding themes, I just. Don’t. Get. It.  So, Jake Hersh is on trial for perversions and he basically goes back through his life and the major events that led up to him being in this position.  It took me three tries to actually read the dang thing and two weeks to complete it.  I even took it with me for an hour on the treadmill and I barely made a dent.  Granted, this is a long book, but he has lived a long life, so I guess there was a lot leading up to the trial. 

Oh heck, I know I am trying to look for meaning where there is some, but I can’t seem to find it.  His character wasn’t necessarily relatable, or likeable.  I couldn’t get on his side at all.  Really I read this book because I had to for my Governor General Award Challenge.

This is my rating, but I would be willing to reconsider if someone could explain this stupid book to me.  What am I missing?  I have a feeling I should be more enthusiastic about it than I am.  It has been made into an award winning movie and a miniseries on CBC television, so someone gets it and should be able to explain it to me, dang it!

Munro, Alice. Dance of the Happy Shades. Penguin Canada (2005). Originally published in 1968

In the stories that make up Dance of the Happy Shades, the deceptive calm of small-town life is brought memorably to the page, revealing the countryside of Southwestern Ontario to be home to as many small sufferings and unanticipated emotions as any place.  This is the book that earned Alice Munro a devoted readership and established her as one of Canada’s most beloved writers.

-  back cover

Well, I can honestly say this book did not bring any “small sufferings” to me.  They were, in fact, quite large.  It is not often that I find it almost impossible to finish a book, but this just about did it for me.  There was not one character I found relatable, not one story, not one theme.  I guess the theme in here was suffering quietly and small-town prejudices.  I don’t really know. 

How this novel is the one that gained Munro a “devoted readership” is beyond me, other than that she is Canadian, she won an award, and perhaps small-town residents found it more relatable than I did.  Her treatment of the characters is very flat and expected.  It seems as though she exploited every small-town stereotype in each of these stories, without a thought to making it different, or more true.  Each character seemed very one-dimensional to me.  Add this to the fact I find it difficult to read short stories, and I was counting and recounting the pages until the end after each story.

I cannot believe that out of all of the books submitted that year (I am sure there was more than this) Happy Shades was deemed the best. 

I have difficulty in finding any redeeming quality about it, but I did feel that the story “Red Dress–1946″ was a little sassy.  Almost a quaint little anecdote, but not so far as a joke.  It is for this reason and the fact that she is an award winner, I am giving it 1 “eh” instead of none.  Plus, I feel that after going through the trouble of writing a book, authors deserve at least some response, even if it is in the negative, and giving it no “ehs” seems like I didn’t even try.