I read The Bear Walk by Christina Rencontre this weekend. It was a creative thesis for the author's Master's degree at Northern Michigan University.
The elements of actual bearwalking were not that prevalent in the story. Teeple does see the bear, that the reader is led to believe is a spirit bear (or a bearwalker). His aunt, Eveleen, complains about being bearwalked, but we don't know if that is really the case. (A person who is being bearwalked will become sick, and ultimately die) She dies, but that element is left ambiguous. The reader is led to blame her alcoholism more than some vague notions of a dark force working against her, especially when we don't hear/see anyone who would have reason to bearwalk her. Ze-do performs the standard bearwalker thwarting measures, but the reader doesn't get a good sense of whether this worked or not. The bearwalking references that were there were interesting. Most of the ones with Teeple did not invoke any sort of ill feeling. It seemed more as a sort of spirit guide or totem than an evil medicine man skinwalking in the form of a bear. The figure of Ze-do presents an obvious suspect for the Bearwalker because he wears a bearskin outfit when performing a ceremony the first time we see him, and his medicine is bear-medicine. By the end of the book this possibility does not seem very probable. It seems odd that he should know so much abut the bear, but that isn't delved into to any great deal. Teeple is given a bearclaw necklace that may or may not have originally come from Ze-do. The necklace is supposed to be kept on until the wearer is done with their journey. I didn't get a good sense that Teeple was done with his journey. I guess he put his family behind him and realized that he could live a sober live, and possibly restart a life with Carole and her new baby. Teeple's motives don't seem very clear to himself. This is one of the problems that arise from such a close narration of a story. I didn't really care all that much about Teeple's character, and I wasn't given much reason to cheer for him at the end. He's off the sauce and he's going to get another woman. What about he own son? What about the years it will take to truly say he is sober. Perhaps that's the point, that it's not the end of a journey really, but the beginning of another. No journey truly has an end, it just leads into the start of another. If done well, that might work for a novel. I've read other novels with such an ending.
I didn't have a problem with the dreams per se, but I did think they could have been used more effectively to foreshadow and explain events. The one real foreshadowing wasn't a dream at all, but a story Ze-do tells him about a bear who is turned into a man, and then goes back and kills his family. Teeple has a dream where he is that bear, but he is burying his family. This relates to the end of the book where all of his family is dead. We are given a hint that his father may be alive, but just started a new family and didn't want to see Teeple anymore. This could have led to some big abandonment issues. This whole father thing was not dealt with at all. Teeple himself is a father, but he seems very apathetic about his own fatherly roles. Nothing is talked about or resolved about it. He talks about his son, and wanting to find his father, but these points are extremely rare and fleeting. It doesn't look like Teeple really embraced the spirit of the bear. He did have Eveleen cremated in Ze-do's way, not the way of her tribe; but that problem was not dealt with or explained really. I guess that means she finally had to come to terms with the bear spirit that was haunting her.
Looking at it like a mass market editor, I can see why this wasn't published. The vernacular can get annoying for someone not used to it. There are more apostrophes per page than I have ever seen. "a" for "of", "an" for "and" Things like that were a little distracting at first. Once I got a page or two in, it seemed very personal and familiar; like Catcher in the Rye type of prose style. I grew up with that accent though, so I know exactly how she meant for things to sound. It is that uneducated northern Michigan accent (not to be confused with the Yooper accent). Others would probably have a difficult time with it. I gave it to Erica to read, she gave up after 2 pages. Experimental style is a risk, sometimes if falls flat. There are some abbreviations and words that aren't explained. Some people wouldn't get that D.T. is supposed to be delirium tremens; and even if they did, it would slow them down. M.D. 20/20 (the cheap wine, Mad Dog 20/20) is another good example. There were also some words that weren't defined very well for English speakers. If you didn't know that muckwa meant bear, you would get a vision of wide muddy tracks from a pick-up truck. These are regionalisms and colloquialisms that should be clarified if you hope to reach a wider audience. I like what Orson Scot Card said, that writing should be just a little bit more formal that actual speaking.
The novel also had some length issues. We like to say that it's the story that matters, in whatever length it takes to write that story. But sometimes that means a fight to get it into the marketplace. At 190 pages, in 12 point Ariel font, double spaced, single sided; this would not even qualify as a novel. I think much of the diversions could be cut down and this turned into a very readable novella. Many of those diversions really just take away from the main intent of the story anyway. Some of the events seem rambling. A story like this is usually striking because of the emotional impact of a person going through a tough mental journey/awakening. This story seemed to give that a short shrift, even though it tried not to. Overall, this was a fair book. I would never have read it if it hadn't had the bearwalk references. I am glad I read it from a research standpoint. As pure entertainment, I was not as satisfied. This seemed like one of the new breed of literary fiction that is marked by how unliterary it seems to be. It shows a group of people that don't often see print, but it didn't really show much more than the tired stereotypes. It tried to delve into deep issues, but seemed scared to really dig beneath the surface and leave any lasting scars.