With her second novel Bear , Julia Phillips consolidates her position as a leading novelist of the cartographic margins. Her first novel Disappearing Earth , a National Book Award finalist and one of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 best books of 2019, was set in Russia’s remote Kamchatka Peninsula; her second brings us to remote San Juan Island in the United States’ Pacific Northwest. Review: Bear – Julia Phillips (Scribe) Bear is a post-pandemic novel with a fairy tale twist.
It begins as a story of the protagonist’s arrested development. At 29, Sam’s dreams have stalled. She lives with her older sister Elena, as they care for their incapacitated mother, a 51-year-old former nail technician, whose overexposure to solvents has caused her terminal lung cancer.
Sam serves confectionery on the San Juan ferry for a meagre 24 dollars an hour, a drop in the ocean when there are bills to pay. She was unemployed during the two years of COVID-19 lockdowns, which decimated the region’s crucial tourism industry. Dependent on Elena’s wages as a bartender at the local golf club, Sam and her family desperately need this second income.
Sam deeply resents serving the ultra-wealthy ecotourists and luxury holiday-home owners, who treat the island as their temporary playground and the local service staff as disposable “peasants”. Her reality is one of precarious labour, exorbitant medical bills and mortgage payments. Economic hardship alienates the sisters from their sur.