The Summer of the Bear [Paperback]

This is a beautiful little book, deceptively simple, yet filled with delightful turns of phrase and dialogue that has a capacity to get underneath all the characters and reveal their lives and emotions in all their complexity. The Fleming family's lives have been made that much more complicated by the death of the father, Nicky, a diplomat stationed in Bonn during the late seventies, while the Cold War is still raging (or intensifying, or freezing, or whatever a Cold War does). His death is considered a suicide and it raises questions about the nature of his activities, particularly one suspicious trip to Berlin with his daughter.

Finding it difficult to deal with the suspicions and insinuations, the family retreat to their residence in the Outer Hebrides, but they find that life isn't simplified by living in a small isolated community. The three children all have problems of their own growing-up, the girls Georgie and Alba reaching a certain difficult age, trying to find their place in the world and establish their own personalities. It's more complicated for Jaimie, the youngest boy, who has learning difficulties and may be autistic. None of them have processed the news of their father's death, least of all Jaimie, who believes that his father is lost but could have returned in the form of an escaped bear that is loose on the island.

Bella Pollen's writing and evocation of each of the characters and the big-little dramas of their lives is spellbinding, capturing the internal struggle within each of them, their actions and reactions, the secrets and the lies that each of them use as little self-deceptions in their daily lives to shore-up the illusions they need to keep going. The fostering of illusions applies as much to the big scale subject of the Cold War as much as it does the Flemings, and even the lives of the other minor characters on the island, and the author brings these all together with remarkable ease and a great deal of charm. It's so good that the depiction of the daily lives of the family is delightful on its own, and it really doesn't need the mystery and intrigue of the spy games to keep it engaging for the reader. Most people will want a resolution however, and the author provides one that should satisfy while retaining the delightful magical ambiguity of the presence of the bear, but it does feel a little too quickly and easily arrived at. Nonetheless, The Summer of the Bear is a wonderful, charming and entertaining book that should hold the reader in its considerable thrall and likely remain with them for some time afterwards.

When the bear escaped in Scotland, it was being filmed for a Kleenex ad being made by the agency that employed me. Panic all round. I'd forgotten all about him. And here he is, featured in a rather beautiful novel.
Some novels hurl you straight into the action with an explosion. Other cover a lot of ground before they really kick off, and The Summer of the Bear is one of the second. I'd almost given up. Don't give up. It's a tense spy story, a story of love, loss and more love, how we cope when our worlds are broken up by death, then broken a bit more, then smashed to pieces, until we're just hanging on for the next minute hoping that it might be an improvement on the last. It's times like those when your mind might play tricks with you. The characters are real, even the most unusual and eccentric ones. The bear is definitely real, but it's down to us to decide how much of him is imaginary, created by an exhausted, confused young mind.
The writing is gentle, which is one of the reasons that the critical points which Bella Pollen makes are so shocking; they creep up on us and smack us unexpectedly. Do read it, even if you don't remember the bear.

Author Bella Pollen was holidaying in the Outer Hebrides in 1980 when a grizzly bear escaped from it's owners and spent 24 days roaming the tiny island of Benbecula. The grizzly never reverted to the wild and when it was eventually captured it had lost almost half of it's body weight. The story captured the attention of the world's media and Bella Pollen and her siblings spent an exciting summer hoping to be the ones who caught the bear. This story has remained with Pollen ever since and is the basis of this novel.

'The Summer of the Bear' tells the story of Letty and her three children who have just moved back to the windswept Scottish island after the death of Nicky - Letty's husband, the children's father and formally a British Diplomat and adored by his family. At the same time a bear has escaped from it's owner and is living somewhere on the island. The family are struggling to come to terms with Nicky's death which has been shrouded in secrecy. The death has been kept entirely from Jamie, the youngest and only boy - he struggles to understand where his Dada is, when is he coming back? Jamie soon convinces himself that the escaped bear is, in fact, his father.

With a really engaging plot, well thought out and well written and some superb characterisation, this book is not really about the missing bear or about the family, but more about communication and how the lack of communication and keeping things from each other can really have a terrible impact on people and families. At times the struggles of the family are really heartbreaking. The children trying to come to terms with a whole new life, a new home and no Dada and Letty struggling to put on a brave face whilst wondering just how Nicky died. Although very sad at times, there is also some wonderful humour. The islanders are so witty and funny, each islander has their own idea about the bear, some think it is the devil!

Gentle, absorbing, witty yet sad and with a hint of magic, this really is a very good read.