It's a bit pretentious but it was manageable. I was pumped - watch out world, I'm gonna get cultured. It sounded good - it had all the hallmarks for cultured reading, right? It won prizes, it's by a treasured national author, it was controversial. Here's the blurb from the back: Marian Engel, one of Canada's most celebrated and provocative novelest, died.The short and controversal novel 'Bear,' her last and best-known work. I found this 120ish page book on the 'suggested reads' table of my local library. I wanted one of those fancy English-students-read-this sort of novels. I picked it because I wanted (for once) to read a novel. So, here is the review from a casual just-for-fun reader:įor the record: did I pick up this book knowing there will be bear-f*ckery? No.

She motherf*cking literally f*cked a literal bear. This isn't some euphemism for a beefy gay man. The Engel and Findley Awards are no longer awarded separately, but were combined into the new Writers’ Trust Notable Author Award as of 2008.

Some of this correspondence can be found in Dear Hugh, Dear Marian: The MacLennan-Engel Correspondence (1995) and Marian Engel: Life in Letters (2004).Īfter her death in 1985, the Writer's Development Trust of Canada instituted the Marian Engel Award, which was presented annually to a woman writer in mid-career. Her most famous and controversial novel was Bear(1976), a tale of erotic love between a librarian and a bear, for which she won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction in 1976.įrom 1965 to her death in 1985 she corresponded with literary peers and friends such as Hugh MacLennan, Robertson Davies, Dennis Lee, Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley, Alice Munro, Margaret Laurence, Matt Cohen, Robert Weaver, Graeme Gibson and more. She wrote two children's books: Adventures of Moon Bay Towers (1974) and My name is not Odessa Yarker (1977). Her first novel, No Clouds of Glory, was published in 1968. Marian and Howard separated in 1975 and divorced in 1977.Įngel was writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta (1977–1978) and at the University of Toronto (1980–1982). She married Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio producer Howard Engel in 1962 and, upon their return to Toronto from England in 1964, began to raise a family-twins William Lucas Passmore and Charlotte Helen Arabella-and to pursue a writing career. In 1982 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. From 1975-1977, she served on the City of Toronto Book Award Committee (an award she won in 1981 for Lunatic Villas) and the Canadian Book and Periodical Development Council.

She was the first chair of the Writer’s Union of Canada (1973–74) and helped found the Public Lending Right Commission. Canadian novelist, short-story and children's fiction writer, Marian Engel was a passionate activist for the national and international writer’s cause.

The bear by marian engel