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There is something so formal and restrained and lovely and lonely about this novella. Startling things happen, sure, but in such a matter-of-fact way that it hardly seems to be out of the ordinary when a human woman, somewhat late in the novella, begins to find passionate fulfillment in an erotic and increasingly risky relationship with a bear.

I'm overcome with delight at how Marian Engel portrayed these scenes. And I'm overcome with gratefulness at the way Engel refuses to anthropomorphize this animal: the bear remains a bear, musty and uncivilized, farting and shitting on occasion, as animals do; and the animal seems neither exploited nor surprised by his explorations of the woman's body; and the woman in turn seems to need nothing from a bear than that it be a bear.

And I come back again in my thoughts about the novella to this idea: that this is a restrained, almost genteel story. The eroticism is presented in such a matter-of-fact way that there was no discomfort or prurient revulsion or anything at all in my head as I read, except a fascination at the way this restrained writing about a bestial relationship allowed all kinds of mythological and sociological implications weave into and out of my thoughts as I read. I remembered Pasiphaë having sex with a bull, for instance. But deeper than any of these connections with mythological stories I felt a connection with bear and woman as the meeting of two extremely lonely creatures, who find solace in one another, and even, yes, love. Remarkable.