In this arresting, exquisite novel, time acquires a new quality. When human civilization is over and there’s no hope left for society, what Krivak imagines is a stillness. An incandescent calm settles upon the earth now that humans are no longer capable of doing any further damage. His unnamed father and daughter live a simple life. Together they hunt, forage, farm, care for one another and tell stories. Gone is rush hour, traffic, neighbors, colleagues. With no one but each other and the earth, the urgency that marks our days is missing.
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.
-Goodreads
Goodreads Reviews
3.9 rating based on 10,595 ratings (all editions)
ISBN-10: 1942658702
ISBN-13: 9781942658702
Goodreads: 45869112
Author(s): Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Published: 2/11/2020
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 Eden-like future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They own a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches his daughter how to fish and hunt and 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 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.