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Book Reviewed by: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.
This is a novel that can change perceptions of the Earth and our place in it. Andrew Krivak's rich, clearly-experienced descriptions of nature make you vividly feel pieces of ice in a river, for example, or the space of a cave. It becomes so obvious that we do not dominate the natural world. We have never dominated it. We are merely guest stars on this planet who have been granted an incredibly generous arc. The novel may inspire a recoupling with nature, or a new connection if you haven't had much of one before...continued
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(Reviewed by Rory L. Aronsky).
Looking at a photograph of Mount Monadnock, it might not appear all that imposing. But if you've seen it in person, you were probably impressed by its size. To capture a place on the page, one has to know it intimately, and it's obvious from Andrew Krivak's deep, poetic descriptions of this mountain and its surrounding environment in The Bear that he has that personal knowledge. He lives in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, and explains on his website that Mount Monadnock served as inspiration for the novel. Throughout, it's referred to as "the mountain that stands alone," which is a translation of its name from the Native Abenaki tribe's language.
In real life, the 3,165-foot mountain is the centerpiece of the Monadnock State Park. Mentions to it...
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