Bear

About this book

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 Hardcover edition.