Jun 25

Jun 25 Bear

About the book

Author: Julia Phillips
Publisher: Hogarth

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

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Bookshop.org (print) | Libro.fm (audio)

My Review

I loved Julia Phillips’ Disappearing Earth, so I was psyched to read her latest book, Bear. It’s hard to compare them, given their very different subject matter, but rest assured that Phillips’ mastery is once again on full display.

The story is very loosely based on the Grimm fairytale “Snow-White and Rose-Red.” It’s about two sisters, Sam (the main character) and Elena, who are barely scraping by with service jobs while caretaking for their terminally ill mother. When a very out-of-place grizzly bear appears on their small island off the Washington coast, taking a special interest in their house, the girls are initially terrified. But soon, the bear becomes only one of many unexpected wedges between them.

Phillips is absolutely incredible at crafting setting, character, and tension — a triple threat. I felt like I could really see the island and feel what it was like to be both of the sisters, even though we only got first-person narration from Sam. She’s so good on a sentence level, too. And the dark undercurrent…whew. You can just tell the story is building and building toward something the whole time, and yet — that ending!! I had expected something different, but it was perfect and inevitable in hindsight. I had to close the book and just sit there for about ten minutes, processing.

The nuanced and layered symbolism of the bear itself, the frustrating messiness of sisterhood, the things we keep from the people we love, the way no two people experience the world the same way — this one nailed it all. Definitely give it a read!