The Bear by Claire
Cameron
Published by Harvill
Secker
13th February 2014
Hardback Edition
Mummy never screams.
Mostly not ever. Except
sometimes.
Anna is five. Her little brother, Stick, is almost three.
They are camping with their parents in Algonquin Park, in three thousand square
miles of wilderness. Something big is moving in the shadows. Her father is
terrified. Her mother is screaming. Then, silence.
Alone in the woods, it is Anna who has to look after
Stick, battling hunger and the elements to stay alive.
I can hear the air going in and out of my brother's
nose. I am awake. He is two years old and almost three and he
bugs me lots of times because I am five years old and soon I will be six but it
is warm sleeping next to him. I call
him Stick. He always falls asleep
before me and I listen to the air of his nose. I can hear my parents' voices.
They are further away than I can reach and whispering because they think
I can't hear. I let out a squeak to let
Mummy know I am awake and she says, 'We're right here' from too far away. I squeak again and the zipper undoes and I
can see the sky in the crack. Her cool
hand brushes my hair back and her fingers touch my cheek. 'Sssh, Anna,' she says, and the sky zips away again. When I am inside a tent the outside is far away.
The tent is
blue and sniffs like dust. My parents
have a fire because it is the end of summer and they are cooking something too
and not sharing with me. Bacon. I love bacon. My tummy rumbles and I want bacon but it will make Daddy
mad. I sniff Gwen teddy bear
instead. She is brown and smells like
us. I hear the air whistle when it leaves Sticky's nose. I feel nervous and I don't know why. The night will be dark soon. And it might be the meat is making my tummy
weird. When we were back at the
cottage, Sticky was chewing on bacon and he shoved another in his mouth and
another and another. When Mummy saw she
said 'chew your food' but Stick couldn't chew because his mouth was all
full. He started to go red and his eyes
got watery and I thought he was crying.
I said, 'Ha ha, Alex's crying', and Mummy came and thumped him. A ball of bacon came out of his mouth. Mummy got Stick in trouble for not chewing
and I looked at the meat. It had spit
on it. I felt a barf in my mouth. And I didn't eat that bacon ball but it's
making my tummy feel weird.
Wow! A book doesn't usually leave me lost for words, but the
opening part of The Bear did.
Graphic would be one of the words I would use to describe the start of
this debut novel by Claire Cameron, gripping and horrifying are two
others. In October 1991 a couple
pitched their tent on an island in Algonquin Park near Toronto, Canada. They planned to stay for three days. When they failed to return their friends
contacted the police. What the police
found were the partially eaten remains of the couple but a large male black
bear. No blame could be found for the
attack, other than that the couple were in the wrong place at the wrong
time. Claire Cameron worked as a summer
camp counsellor in Algonquin Park in the summers of '91 and '92 and The Bear
is based around her memories and research of the bear attack.
What Cameron does differently is, she adds children. And not grown-upish children who might be
able to fend for themselves, but a five and two year old, one who has no
understanding of what has taken place, and one who has all the responsibility
from then onwards. As a parent of two
young children, my heart was in my mouth when I started reading this book. Is a five year old narrator plausible and
reliable? Probably not, but as the
pages turn, you sort of forget that she is only five and are rooting for her
and her brother to make it off of the island to safety. I won't say anymore about the book because I
think it deserves to be read without any more preamble.
Books very rarely make me cry, but this one almost did. It's a cracking read, and maybe not for the
faint-hearted but I'll certainly be recommending it.
Happy Reading
Just added this to my list, thanks for sharing your opinion and review.
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