Book Marks reviews of Bear by Julia Phillips
Trapped on a remote Washington island with their dreams out of reach, two sisters clash when a mysterious bear arrives swimming in the channel, forcing them to confront their conflicting desires for escape and connection.
May remind readers of Alice Hoffman’s fantasy-flecked novels, and Phillips sprinkles around the fairy dust liberally in some sections ... All this is spun with an ever-tightening weave of dread. Wisely, Phillips keeps her book relatively short and uses the story’s narrow focus to emphasize the sisters’ physical isolation. Even the novel’s young-adult tone, which feels cloying at first, soon reveals itself as wholly intentional, a reflection of Sam’s arrested development exacerbated by those two years of covid stasis. Impoverished, alienated and desperately lonely, she’s retreated further than she realizes into a world of fragile hope. When that shatters, as it must, the situation becomes more erratic and dangerous than you know what.
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It’s Phillips’ mastery of the world she’s created that firmly roots the reader inside these characters’ psyches — and their story ... Vivid ... An intimate look at misery and what it means to feel unhinged.
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Vivid descriptions...add luster to this brooding yet incisive tale. Phillips paints a striking picture of the charred landscape that remains after everything else burns to the ground.
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