A review by jnzllwgr
The Bear by Andrew Krivak

4.0

This was a *very* quick read…2-3 hours. Chose it as an offshoot of the alien visitor theme that had been dominating the last several books I’ve read. In this, there are 2 humans left on earth, a father and daughter. There are inferences to a time when there were more people. But the father’s words give the reader the belief that they are the last. Despite the human people’s situation, the world is fecund. Life is back in all it’s wild glory. I had hoped for more of the narrative to create tension between what happened to the way the world became. Perhaps to draw understandings between our present behavior and the net result. But this was more of an encomium to Mother Nature and the interconnectedness of all things. The greatest beauty in the novel is the gentle reminder that life exists outside of homo sapiens and that it will shall be always. Fans of Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, Alex Weisman’s ‘The World Without Us’, and Timothy Morton, perhaps, apply.