The Bear - Common Read: Home

The Bear, National Book Award finalist Andrew Krivak’s third novel, is a “beautiful and elegant … gem” (Publishers Weekly) that explores a world at the end of humanity. The last two humans on Earth—a father and daughter—live off the land at the foot of a mountain, learning to live alongside the rhythms of a world reclaimed by nature. Then one day, the girl is alone: left only with the lessons her father taught her and the companionship of the vast wilderness. "Krivak folds the deep past and the far future into a remarkable fable about our inheritance as humanity makes a harmonic return to the spirit and animal worlds," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Adam Johnson. Krivak’s descriptions are “so loving and vivid that you can feel the lake water and smell the sea” (Slate). “This tender story is endowed with such fullness of meaning that you have to assign this short, touching book its own category: the post-apocalypse utopia” (Wall Street Journal).
Source: The National Endowment for the Arts

Discussion Questions

1. From the very first sentence, we’re aware that this will be a novel that grapples with human extinction. How do the man and his daughter, described as “the last two” (p. 13), each view their place in their world? How did you view their place in that world? Did your view change over the course of the book? If you and someone you loved were the last two on Earth, what do you think your view would be?
2. How does the novel portray the father and daughter’s relationship? How is their relationship similar to parent/child relationships in our current day? How does it differ? Are there moments in their relationship that remind you of relationships in your own life?
3. In an interview with the National Endowment for the Arts Art Works podcast, Krivak observes that in The Bear, “storytelling is so much a matter of memory...there's a quality of what's forgotten as much as what's remembered.” The novel never reveals what past events have led to humankind’s extinction. Why do you think Krivak chose not to be explicit about what happened in the past? How did it affect your experience of the book?
4. Early in the novel, the girl watches a bear emerge from the woods and walk toward the lake. She asks her father, “Was my mother a bear?” (p. 35). Why might she pose this question? At another point, the father tells his daughter a fairy tale about a talking bear that saves a village. Why do you believe the author included this story within a story? What other roles do bears play in the novel?
5. Krivak has stated that the novel first took shape during a moment alone, fishing on a lake in the shadow of New Hampshire’s Mount Monadnock. What experiences of place have shaped your own life or offered creative inspiration?
6. Throughout the book, the girl and her father cherish familiar items from our current day and time, including “paper bound between leather covers and a graphite pencil, which [the man] kept sharpened with his knife” (p. 16). What kinds of meaning do they assign to these objects? Did this change your perspective on any of the everyday objects in your life?
7. As the girl gets older, the man teaches her “...about what had been and why it had been that way, from tales recounted in old words of an old time on old pieces of paper bound between cracked and fraying covers” (p. 33), the histories and imaginings of the many people who came before them. Consider your own encounters with history in the present day—in the media, in museums, in books, in libraries. What kinds of stories do you hope survive? Are there certain stories you hope don’t survive? What might we gain or lose from the survival or extinction of our stories?
8. What can The Bear teach us about grief? Did any of the moments in the novel that speak to grief resonate with you?
9. Although The Bear was written for adults and compared by many reviewers to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, readers of all ages have found that it reminds them of beloved books from their childhood such as Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain, Scott O'Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins, and Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet. Why might this story inspire this reaction? Does the novel echo any of your own favorite childhood books?
10. Throughout the novel, the main characters are only referred to as “the man,” “the girl,” “her father,” etc. Why do you think the characters remain unnamed? How might names have changed your reading of the book?
11. Much later, as the girl grows old, she uses the books—and the many artifacts contained within her childhood home—as fuel for fire. Though she no longer reads poetry, she still listens for stories and verse in “the whispering of beeches and pine…the song of the gray catbird and the cry of the loon…the slow and susurrant voice of the trees” (p. 218). How might this expand our understanding of stories and storytelling? Who do you think is telling the story of The Bear?
12. How did you feel after finishing The Bear? Did the ending surprise you? Was there a particular person in your life you wanted to share it with?

Source material for The Bear discussion questions from Bellevue Literary Press and listed here.