Once upon a time, two sisters took care of their terminally ill mother and waited for the day they could leave their life of minimum-wage despair. Bear by Julia Phillips relates the fairy tale of what one sister, Sam, has believed for most of her life. And what happened when a bear came to their Friday Harbor, Washington, home.
Bear is a fairy tale, a tale about the stories we tell ourselves. Sam has a job she hates, working concessions on a state ferry. She serves coffee, chowder and snacks to cranky customers. She works for a company with a food service contract, so she doesn't even get the benefits of a state job.
Her beautiful princess of a sister, Elena, has worked at the local country club since graduating high school. The sisters spend their time working and, when not, taking care of their mother. Her heart and lungs have been deteriorating for years. Their home, first occupied by their grandparents, is falling apart. But Elena has promised that when their mother passes, they will sell the house and its five acres, leave the San Juan Islands and live the good life.
Within a couple years, their mother got sick, and so the stories they made up with each other shifted. A town where they were strangers to their neighbors. A garden of their own with two rosebushes, white and red, that they would have the time to indulge in tending.
The dreaming helped. It had since they were children, wondering about the answers to the questions no adults in their life would address. It helped them make sense of what they could not, in everyday life, fathom. When they were teens and their house became unbearable, they went out into the woods, so they could lie on the cool earth between hemlock trees and imagine being elsewhere. Needles shivered over them. Meteors streaked across the sky. The moon, when it was full, was a hole in the darkness, an open door to another world.
Sam is counting on that story. She doesn't have friends, she doesn't know how relationships work. Still, there are good things in her life. Some she recognizes, such as the beauty of where they live and the quiet moments she shares with her sister and mother.
On one ferry run, she sees a bear swimming alongside the boat. It is a glorious sight that fills Sam with wonder.
Sam had seen it herself: the wet, furred hump of the animal's back, the line of its neck, its pointed nose and small round ears. The water was silver and the sky was dimming blue, and the creature, against those colors, was a dark spot, but the last light in the air outlined its form, made it clear and shocking and strange.
It's not so wonderful when, a few days later, she discovers a huge scat left on their front walk. Yup, it was from the bear. And then Sam and Elena see the bear sitting on their sidewalk. Just sitting there before ambling off.
The girls grew up wandering the island. But this bear hanging around nearby is something different. Elena feels it is a magical sign. She is enamored of the bear, as if it was a prince in disguise who will change their lives. As the bear lingers instead of moving on, as the wildlife experts tell the sisters will happen, Elena becomes more convinced there is destiny at play.
The isolation of the sisters is an integral part of the story. There are some characters that appear they may be heroes, if not quite knights in shining armor. But more often than not, their conviction that they should fly under the radar and not reach out for help is the best plan. Because they don't want to get burned again.
The tales they tell each other and themselves are a large aspect of what makes Bear powerful storytelling. So is the setting, portrayed as well by Phillips as she portrays her characters. Bear has the magic of counting on love, the magic of a magical place, and the magic that darkness brings.
Sam may think of herself as unlovable and unlikeable, and she certainly works at it, but her inner strength propels Bear to a realistic happy ending, or at least the chance of one.
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Some of the new fiction releases are noted, with links to The Literate Lizard online bookstore of our Readers and Book Lovers colleague DebtorsPrison and blurbs from the publishers:
Quincas Borba by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
A satirical tale of a young man flush with newfound wealth who promptly gets swindled, Quincas Borba is an inspired critique of nineteenth-century Brazil.
Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
An exhilarating novel about one American family, the dark moment that shatters their suburban paradise, and the wild legacy of trauma and inheritance, from the New York Times bestselling author of Fleishman Is in Trouble.
The Potato Eaters: Stories by Farhad Pirbal
From Kurdish poet and writer Farhad Pirbal, a heartbreaking collection of short stories.
Each tale in The Potato Eaters underlines “otherness”, or isolation and displacement in contemporary society.
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
Award-winning writer Kevin Barry’s first novel set in America, a savagely funny and achingly romantic tale of young lovers on the lam in 1890s Montana.
Goodnight Tokyo by Atsuhiro Yoshida
A symphony of interconnected lives that offers a compelling reflection on life in modern-day metropolises at the intersection of isolation and intimacy in Yoshida’s English-language debut.
My Parents' Marriage by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
Acclaimed children’s author Nana Brew-Hammond makes her highly anticipated return with this soaring and profound story about love and understanding told through three generations of one Ghanaian family.
Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
Misha knows that chasing success in Hollywood can be hell.
But finally, after years of trying to make it, his big moment is here: an Oscar nomination. And the executives at the studio for his long-running streaming series know just the thing to kick his career to the next level: kill off the gay characters, "for the algorithm," in the upcoming season finale.
Misha refuses, but he soon realizes that he’s just put a target on his back. And what’s worse, monsters from his horror movie days are stalking him and his friends through the hills above Los Angeles.
Grown Women by Sarai Johnson
Erudite Evelyn, her cynical daughter Charlotte, and Charlotte’s optimistic daughter Corinna see the world very differently. Though they love each other deeply, it’s no wonder that their personalities often clash. But their conflicts go deeper than run-of-the-mill disagreements. Here, there is deep, dark resentment for past and present hurt.
When Corinna gives birth to her own daughter, Camille, the beautiful, intelligent little girl offers this trio of mothers something they all need: hope, joy, and an opportunity to reconcile. They decide to work together to raise their collective daughter with the tenderness and empathy they missed in their own relationships. Yet despite their best intentions, they cannot agree on what that means.
A Thousand Times Before by Asha Thanki
A heartrending family saga following three generations of women connected by a fantastic tapestry through which they inherit the experiences of those that lived before them, sweeping readers from Partition-era India to modern day Brooklyn.
Tell It to Me Singing by Tita Ramirez
A Cuban American family is sent into a tailspin when the ailing matriarch confesses the first of several shocking secrets to her daughter before undergoing heart surgery in this tender and twisty debut novel.
Toward Eternity by Anton Hur
Negotiating the terrain of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, a brilliant, haunting speculative novel from a #1 New York Times bestselling translator that sets out to answer the question: What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology?
The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas
Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. What should their life here look like? What rituals will structure their days? Whom can they consider family?
As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, gathers footage from the neighborhood like an anthropologist observing local customs. “Forget about daily life,” chides her grandmother on the phone. “We named you for a whole continent and you’re filming a park.”
The Coin by Yasmin Zaher
A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling as she teaches at a New York City middle school, gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags, and strives to gain control over her body and mind.
The Sirens of Soleil City by Sarah C. Johns
Three generations of women learn to own their mistakes and rebuild their bonds as they prepare to compete in the Senior Synchronized Swimming Competition in South Florida.
This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour
From the award-winning and bestselling author of Black Buck: A speculative novel about a young woman—invisible by birth and relegated to second class citizenship—who sets off on a mission to find her older brother, whom she had presumed dead but who is now the primary suspect in a high-profile political murder.
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