Sisters in the Pacific Northwest grapple with threats real and (possibly) metaphorical.
Julia Phillips introduces her new novel, Bear, with a prefatory snippet from the Brothers Grimm. A wild bear, wandering in from the dark forest (a Grimm set piece), takes up residence with a human family. The beast meets with welcoming attention and makes itself at home, although the children, predictably boisterous, eventually take to tormenting it playfully. It growls a bit, and they laugh. Fade out.
When events in Phillips’ narrative start to mirror this preamble, what reader wouldn’t anticipate the clamorous arrival of allegory, that fairy godmother of literature, to set things in order? But this is not to be — at least not yet — for Phillips has another mode of narrative spellcasting to put in play, and we soon find ourselves in a gritty, character-driven family drama centering on two twentysomething sisters.
The locale is the San Juan Islands of northwest Washington, a beautiful estuarine realm edged by forested wildlands. Sam Arthur runs the concession stand on a ferry that transports passengers, mainly tourists, from island to island. Elena, her elder sister, waits tables at the country club on the island where they live. They make do with dead-end jobs and paltry wages to support their ailing, bedridden mother, whose medical debts are growing by the day. Both siblings — as Sam, the novel’s narrator, sees it — work at jobs defined by stark class distinctions. On the ferry, Sam, to her petulant annoyance, is the foil of prosperous mainland tourists; at the club, Elena has to kowtow to the more privileged residents of the island.
Of the two, Sam is the dreamer, fixated on the far future when (sadly) their mother would pass on and (happily) the sisters would inherit her house and property, releasing a monetary windfall that would allow them to fly away together:
“One day, they would leave San Juan. Their world would expand, grow richer and more stable. The happinesses would come constantly…”
Sam’s day-to-day reality is more earthbound than her bright fantasies of tomorrow. She has drifted into a matter-of-fact relationship with a dull ferry crewman, with whom she hooks up in out-of-the-way shipboard spaces, including closets and locker rooms, and there only. Her sole connections of any emotional resonance are with her sister and mother. She admires Elena for her budgetary rectitude and her dogged stamina in holding off their creditors. She never considers her sister’s inner life, assuming it tracks with her own escapist daydreams.
The bear enters Phillips’ tale as a curiosity. Sam, idling at the ferry rail, glimpses it swimming parallel to the boat. No seal or orca, but an actual bear in the water, crossing the bay toward Sam’s home island. Later, it visits the family there, terrifying the sisters as it rubs up against their front door:
“There, not ten feet away, was the animal’s massive body. As big as three men. Wider, stronger, and far deadlier. Its tail, its back, its thighs. It twitched and its muscles rippled. A dark stripe of fur lay over its spine…The bear, with a blow, could smash through one of their windows, barge into the kitchen. Demolish their lives.”
The creature lingers in nearby woods, occasionally taking deer or livestock but raising no great alarm among the townspeople. But Elena harbors a growing fascination (might we say infatuation?) with the bear and dares, in the ensuing weeks, to approach it ever more closely. Sam is horrified by the animal, by the reckless chances Elena takes in getting close to it, and by Elena’s uncharacteristic and demi-spiritual transport when she speaks of this massive, potentially deadly presence in her life. At the same time, their mother’s precarious health is markedly deteriorating.
Author Phillips skillfully depicts a dismal, socially stratified environment and slips her laissez-faire grizzly into the narrative stream so adroitly that it seems earned — until the nimbus of magical realism begins to flicker. Some readers may find their engagement wearing thin about halfway in, giving way to a dawning sense of predictability that puts suspended disbelief to the test.
But make no mistake: This is an artful novel, a virtuosa depiction of two sisters struggling for stability in the face of looming peril. But the mixed tone as the book nears its climactic moments — its dismal neo-naturalism versus its figurative claims on reader credulity — may present a challenge for some. It’s fair to say Bear is not, strictly speaking, an “uplifting” novel. Even so, Phillips has crafted a beguiling world peopled by characters who stir the heart with their longing for something better than what they have.
Bob Duffy reviews frequently for the Independent.
