{"id":30692,"date":"2025-04-29T13:43:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T17:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=30692"},"modified":"2026-05-02T01:06:03","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T05:06:03","slug":"andrew-krivak-the-bear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2025\/04\/29\/andrew-krivak-the-bear\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Krivak: The Bear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Bear<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
by Andrew Krivak (2020)<\/span>
Bellevue Literary Press (2020)<\/span>
224 pp<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My local library book club’s April book was Andrew Krivak’s The Bear<\/em>, a 2020 novel I hadn’t heard of until it showed up on the docket. Now that I’ve read it, I want to go back and explore Krivak’s earlier work. If The Bear<\/em> is anything to go by, I’ll love them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Set sometime in the future after the collapse of civilizations, The Bear is a different kind of post-apocalyptic novel. It’s not about rebuilding or surviving in packs. It’s quiet, lonelier, and more elemental — closer to myth or fable. In fact, Krivak tells us right away in the opening sentence that there are only two humans left:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The last two were a girl and her father who lived along the old eastern range on the side of a mountain that stands alone. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And he means it. Nowhere in this book is there a hidden village, no surprise return of society. This really is the end — and yet it never feels grim. Instead, it’s a deeply compassionate meditation on grief, legacy, and our place in a world that can — and will — go on without us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bond between father and daughter is tender and understated. They live in a rhythm that feels almost liturgical: hunting, walking, telling stories, remembering. They both know that when one of them is gone, it will mean not just a personal loss, but the end of the human story. And yet the novel never tips into despair. It becomes, surprisingly, a story about endurance — about how memory, love, and reverence might linger even after we’re gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About halfway through the book, everything I expected to happen had already happened, and I found myself wondering where it could possibly go. I won’t spoil what follows, but I will say it’s strange, graceful, and unexpectedly luminous. The second half transforms the novel into something even more expansive: a mediation on solitude, spirituality, and the quiet wisdom of the natural world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somehow, The Bear manages to be a story of the end — and it still feels like a beginning. As the final line suggests:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Then he set out, moving west along the shore, the sky beginning to pale behind him like the world itself being born.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Krivak\u2019s The Bear<\/em> is a quiet, elegiac novel about the last two humans on earth\u2014and what endures when everything else is gone. A tender story of survival, grief, and reverence for the natural world. Here are some of my thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1511,800],"tags":[1365,1366],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-30692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-andrew-krivak","category-book-reviews","tag-1365","tag-2020s"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/The-Bear-Featured-Image.jpg?fit=700%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-7Z2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30692"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31026,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30692\/revisions\/31026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30692"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=30692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}