Bear

Starred review from March 18, 2024
In the beautiful and haunting latest from Phillips (Disappearing Earth), two 20-something sisters contend with economic precarity and their mother’s terminal illness on present-day San Juan Island, Wash. Sam, the protagonist, and her older sister, Elena, have spent their entire adult lives caring for their mother, a former manicurist whose lung disease was brought about by exposure to chemicals while on the job. Faced with spiraling medical bills, the sisters have no choice but to take unrewarding jobs (Sam as a vendor on the local ferries, Elena as a waitress at a golf club), the drudgery of which is leavened only by the expectation of a “better future” after their mother dies and they sell the house. That is, until they encounter an unexpected visitor to the island: a grizzly bear, which becomes a powerful symbol of hope for Elena, who believes the animal is magical; and terror for Sam, who considers it nothing but a dangerous menace. The bear provides a vehicle for the author’s masterful characterization, as the sisters clash over their perception of the grizzly’s meaning in their lives, and for the increasingly suspenseful plot. Phillips prefaces the story with an excerpt from the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “Snow-White and Rose-Red,” about two sisters who play with a bear, which sets a simultaneously playful and ominous tone and contrasts powerfully with the novel’s supremely executed realism. This is brilliant. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME.

May 1, 2024
Sam's entire life has played out in suspended animation. Her mom's irreversible lung disease means her demise is imminent. Sam's dead-end job on the ferries plying the San Juan Islands in the Pacific Northwest is in service to this existence. Along with her slightly older sister Elena, Sam hopes the final boat ride off the island toward a fuller life is not far away. What she doesn't realize is that Elena has been systematically worn away by the burden of her responsibilities toward her mother and younger sister. Drowning in debt, she is barely hanging on, and hope is rare to come by. When a grizzly bear shows up outside their home, Elena views it as a sign that a life outside rigid confines is possible as this magnificent beast adds beauty and wonder to her days. The animal's near-mystical presence, however, rends the sisters' lives apart, throwing their dissimilarities into sharp focus. Vivid descriptions--a high school is "a tiny, gossipy hellhole, a bucket of crabs snapping at each other and falling over themselves"--add luster to this brooding yet incisive tale. Phillips (Disappearing Earth, 2020) paints a striking picture of the charred landscape that remains after everything else burns to the ground.

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Starred review from May 1, 2024

Following up her debut, Disappearing Earth, which was a National Book Award finalist and one of NYT's 10 Best of the Year, Phillips tells a tale of two sisters barely getting by and dreaming of escaping their home on an island off the coast of Washington. But their dreams are upended when a bear appears. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from July 1, 2024
In the San Juan Islands off Washington state, two sisters, bonded in the care of their dying mother, are divided by their reaction to a wildlife intruder. Phillips' follow-up to her acclaimed debut, Disappearing Earth (2019), again concerns a pair of sisters in a gorgeously evoked, off-the-beaten-track setting, this time with a close focus on the complicated psychology of the sibling relationship. Elena and Sam's beautiful mother was "an orphan with two toddlers by the time she was twenty-five" and now, not long past her 50th birthday, is dying of causes related to inhaling solvents at the nail salon where she worked. Her daughters toil at the golf club restaurant and in the snack bar on the ferry; their plan is to make ends meet until their mother dies, then sell their house and the valuable land it occupies and leave the island. Phillips opens the novel with an excerpt from the fairy tale "Snow-White and Rose-Red" by the Brothers Grimm: "'Poor bear, ' said the mother, 'lie down by the fire, only take care that you do not burn your coat.'" This welcoming response to a wild creature is reflected in Elena's reaction to a huge bear that shows up outside their front door one day, probably the same one Sam just spied from the deck of the ferry, swimming the channel. Unlike her older sister, Sam is terrified of the creature, and all the more so as Elena begins to feed and court him as a wilderness pet, imagining the bear as a magical lucky charm in their dreary lives. In Sam, her flawed and fascinating point-of-view character, Phillips flexes her writerly finesse and insight, creating a postadolescent working-class heroine full of resentment at all the monied people surrounding her, deeply dependent on her sister, and suspicious of everyone else. The division between the sisters is sharpened by secrets and past trauma that emerge slowly, then explode. A bold and brilliant modern fable of sisterhood, class, and our relationship to the natural world.

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