The Summer of the Bear
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4.1 • 7 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“A gently absorbing tale which smoothly splices poignant family drama with suspenseful Cold War thriller,” from the author of Hunting Unicorns. (Daily Mail).
In 1980 Germany, under Cold War tension, a mole is suspected in the British Embassy. When the diplomat Nicky Fleming dies—suddenly and suspiciously—some find it convenient to brand him the traitor.
As the government digs into Nicky’s history, his wife Letty hopes to salvage their family by taking their three children to live on an island in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. But the isolated shores of her childhood retreat only intensify their distance, and it is Letty’s youngest child, Jamie, who alone holds on to the one thing he’s sure of: his father promised to return. And he was a man who never broke a promise.
Named an O Magazine Summer Reading Pick and a selection for NPR’s “Books with Personality,” The Summer of the Bear reads like “García Márquez meets le Carré meets A.A. Milne at times, with hints of William Golding at others” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Fleming family, having lost father and husband Nicky, a cold war-era British diplomat, in a mysterious accident early in this satisfying novel (after Midnight Cactus), leaves the embassy at Bonn for refuge in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. There they begin parallel lives, dealing with their grief separately and stumblingly as a number of threats to the family slowly mount. Of the children, Jamie, the youngest, wildly imaginative and cosseted by grownups, is forced to make his own sense of his father's disappearance; acerbic Alba is overcome with anger; and quiet, dutiful Georgie is simply set adrift. Then there's Letty, their mother, who retreats almost entirely as her grief becomes increasingly painful and she is forced to confront new and disturbing possibilities about her husband, namely, that he may have been involved in treasonous activities. The drama intensifies as an escaped bear haunts the narrative periphery and the Flemings' home becomes threatened by government development projects. Everything comes together, perhaps too neatly, but the real draw is Pollen's show-stealing, fantastic portrayal of the underparented children.
