Episode 13: Bear by Marian Engel

Somebody Wrote This

A librarian acquires a new lover on a business trip to Northern Ontario, except that he's a bear, as in not a human at all. But is it a bear or a symbol of the reaffirmation of her sexuality and a victory over her alienation from her own body, its desires and the sublimation of her needs into an eroticism that is palatable to men? It's a bear.

Kelly and Lexi are back and the first in line at the liquor store to recount the tale of a cataloguer and her furry new boyfriend in Marian Engel's Bear, a book that won awards mainly because of the 1970s.