She married Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio producer Howard Engel in 1962 and, upon their return to Toronto from England in 1964, began to raise a family-twins William Lucas Passmore and Charlotte Helen Arabella-and to pursue a writing career. In 1982 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. From 1975-1977, she served on the City of Toronto Book Award Committee (an award she won in 1981 for Lunatic Villas) and the Canadian Book and Periodical Development Council. She was the first chair of the Writer’s Union of Canada (1973–74) and helped found the Public Lending Right Commission. That’s a pity but that doesn’t make the novel a bad one – far from it.Canadian novelist, short-story and children's fiction writer, Marian Engel was a passionate activist for the national and international writer’s cause. I remained a bit at a distance from Lou when I just wanted to be drawn in. I think what kept me from loving it completely (apart from my Cary confusion) was the fact that the themes just didn’t speak to me that much.

It is overall a beautifully written novel that I found engaging. At the same time, I was also a little confused about the backstory surrounding Colonel Cary – I could never really keep the family members straight in my head and was therefore never really sure about how they really fit in the larger story, though I rather liked certain elements of it. I found this way of facilitating Lou’s growth fascinating and very well done. It is not a particularly healthy relationship as you can probably imagine, but her own power is heightened by the bear’s (physical) power, and when he actually hurts her (as is in his nature), she learns that you can also walk away from a relationship that just doesn’t work. But where Lou kind of abuses herself by maintaining relationships with men that don’t have much to offer, to put it mildly, in her relationship with the bear, she is the powerful one, she is the one who uses. Relationships shaped by a certain inequality, with a bit of danger and definitely a lot of social stigma. While it is the thing that draws people’s attention, it really is a book about a woman who finds her way to herself through a relationship that is both different and not so different to the ones she has had so far. In any case, it’s not really about the sex. It is actually not the first book I read that featured human-ursine sex (that honor goes to Tender Morsels), but it is definitely a surprisingly realistic depiction of it. In German twitter, it even made the rounds as #BärenSexBuch (#BearSexBook). Bear has mostly garnered a reputation for having a sex scene (actually more than one) between Lou and the bear.

Bear by marian