Honey for the Bears

by Anthony Burgess

"There are so few genuinely entertaining novels around that we ought to cheer whenever one turns up. Continuous, fizzing energy. . . . Honey for the Bears is a triumph."―Kingsley Amis, New York Times A sharply written satire,  Honey for the Bears sends an unassuming antiques dealer, Paul Hussey, to Russia to do one final deal on the black market as a favor for a dead friend's wife. Even on the ship's voyage across, the Russian sensibility begins to lots of secrets and lots of vodka. When his American wife is stricken by a painful rash and he is interrogated at his hotel by Soviet agents who know that he is trying to sell stylish synthetic dresses to the masses starved for fashion, his precarious inner balance is thrown off for good. More drink follows, discoveries of his wife's illicit affair with another woman, and his own submerged sexual feelings come breaking through the surface, bubbling up in Russian champagne and caviar.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, British Literature, Russia, Novels, 20th Century, Humor

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Seriocomic novels of noted British writer and critic Anthony Burgess, pen name of John Burgess Wilson, include the futuristic classic A Clockwork Orange (1962).

He composed also a librettos, poems, plays, screens, and essays and traveled, broadcast, translated, linguist and educationalist. He lived for long periods in southeastern Asia, the United States of America, and Europe along Mediterranean Sea as well as England. His fiction embraces the Malayan trilogy ( The Long Day Wanes ) on the dying days of empire in the east. The Enderby quartet concerns a poet and his muse. Nothing like the Sun re-creates love life of William Shakespeare. He explores the nature of evil with Earthly Powers , a panoramic saga of the 20th century. He published studies of James Joyce, Ernest Miller Hemingway, Shakespeare, and David Herbert Lawrence. He produced the treatises Language Made Plain and A Mouthful of Air . His journalism proliferated in several languages. He translated and adapted Cyrano de Bergerac , Oedipus the King , and Carmen for the stage. He scripted Jesus of Nazareth and Moses the Lawgiver for the screen. He invented the prehistoric language, spoken in Quest for Fire . He composed the Sinfoni Melayu , the Symphony (No. 3) in C , and the opera Blooms of Dublin .

Reviews

[Gijs Grob · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some books don't age very well, and Burgess' 'Honey for the Bears' is certainly one of them. Set in Khrushchev's Soviet Union it tells about Paul Hussey, a middle-aged dealer in antiques who goes to Leningrad to try to sell some dresses. However, this plan immediately goes haywire...

'Honey for the Bears' is advertised as a comedy, but although Paul's adventures in Leningrad are quite absurd, funny they're not. Instead they are too often beyond believability to hold the reader. Moreover, Paul is in no way a sympathetic character, and one doesn't care what happens to him. Worse, Burgess himself is all too present, with his focus on linguistics, and showing off his knowledge of the Russian language. And finally, the setting of Leningrad is rather trivial, and Burgess doesn't come across as very knowledgeable about the Soviet Union.
Paul spends most of his time drinking and not comprehending what's happening. In this sense the novel could have taken place in any strange place. It makes 'Honey for the Bears' akin to William Boyd's 'A Good Man in Africa', which tells you equally little about Africa.

Anyone interested in the absurdity that was the Soviet Union can better turn to the great satirists of the Soviet Union itself, e.g. Ilya Ilf, Yevgeni Petrov, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Abram Tertz.

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Hussey, an English antique dealer with a talent for stumbling into trouble, is the star of Burgess's 1963 novel. Paul and his wife, Belinda, set sail to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in Khrushchev's Soviet Union, armed with a cargo of drilon dresses. What could possibly go wrong? Well, everything.

Upon arrival, they dive headfirst into a world brimming with customs agents, shady hotel workers, black marketeers, secret police, and political dissidents.

The grim realities of Soviet life put a serious strain on Paul and Belinda's relationship. Belinda falls ill and ends up in the hospital, where she befriends a Soviet nurse. Meanwhile, Paul is left to navigate the treacherous streets of Leningrad solo, encountering a colorful cast of characters, including the comically sinister KGB agents Zverkov and Karamzin - James Bond villains with a penchant for slapstick.

Paul's journey is a series of laugh-out-loud misadventures. He loses his false teeth in a brawl, and somehow gets roped into a plot to smuggle a dissident's son out of the country.

Burgess's novel is a rich blend of comedy, tragedy, and political satire. His portrayal of Leningrad is so acute that you can smell the paranoia and taste the surveillance. Through Paul's bumbling escapades, the novel explores deeper questions about identity, freedom, and the nature of reality. And let's be honest, his insights into Cold War Russia are still spot-on, even six decades later.

In typical British aloofness, Burgess is able to make fun of the Soviets. I imagine that living under these conditions is less humorous.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty entertaining high-brow slapstick romp that featured a few laugh out loud moments; however, having read a couple of Burgess' Biographical fictions recently (one about Shakespeare the other about Christopher Marlowe) this wasn't as rich in language nor as enjoyable. One thing I will say, is that the Soviet Union, more than any other country, goes hand in hand with satire. Follows the protagonist Paul Hussey and his wife (although she spends a big chunk of the novel sick in hospital) and their adventures selling black market dresses to fashion-conscious in Russia, whilst the scam sees the Soviet secret police on his tail; added to that there is the revelation of a lesbian love affair, and Paul trying to smuggle out the son of a talented composer, which ends up testing his sexuality.

[Daire Hogan · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of those books you feel was deeper then you understood it to be and feel needs another read to fully understand. Tho you know you won't read it again as it wasn't really that compelling a read.
Funny ? it had it's moments. Thought provoking? it had fewer of these but some. A page turner? you'll be thinking about what to read next half way through.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honey for the Bears is a very interesting social commentary written about the earlier period of the Cold War. It is an all-together well written novel that uses witty humor to make the reader both laugh and think. While not being the funniest novel I've read, it seems that Burgess meant to use the humor more to create a buffer for the taboo subject of Homosexuality present throughout the second half of the novel. It is not what I consider to be explicit but may shock some more than others so read at your own risk. That being said, the work produces an outside view on society and reveals that the US and USSR were not as different deep down as they claimed to be. The final verdict is five stars because I really enjoyed it. Advice for potential readers: this book is written in English but has many Russian words thrown into it because Burgess believed that people can be "afraid of words," so if you aren't familiar with Russian Vocabulary or don't want to look up words frequently, you might wish to consider another book.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

A shame to rate low; fans of Clockwork Orange (1962) can see Burgess' incorporation of the real-life droogs and horrorshow. But the Russia evoked here's superficial. Seen through the eyes of "tourist" Paul Hussey, gusseyed up as the narrative unfolds in slapping, in the brutal sense, and slapstick, in the bedroom farce, which alternate as this satire unfortunately loses what little verisimilitude with which it began. Even if the vagueness of this CCCP raw rather than cooked tour is blamed on the protagonist's naivete, the imbalance of outré sex, smacking about and drinking bouts (Burgess' being deftly vivid when channeling violence, inebriation, the morning after, ESL, and hallucinatory states...) throws off the momentum, as the shifts in tone and content veer crazily, plodding along.

It's a harbinger of the massive social upheaval during the Cold War which would turn topsy-turvy first the "Free World" (which comes in for some acerbic put-downs from both the operatives of the Workers and Peasants' Republic as well as Hussey, amidst scruffy undergrads, cynical chain-smoking expats, and their frowsy, hip, hirsute earnest, bien-pensant proto-progressive chaperone). In that for me lies this flimsy satire's greatest strength, rather than its madcap set-pieces. Burgess allows us to glimpse dark realities behind "socialist" facades and falsity among au courant pieties.

Trouble is I didn't care about those dramatized. even if the contexts deserved attention. Tiresome Paul's smuggling endeavor of "drilon" dresses seemed flimsy in more ways than one. The beatnik characterizations of Alex and Anna while probably accurate as to the posings of Red-besotted naifs (0ne can hear their grandchildren if not great-grandkids in those braying against the sins of racist $$$ Amerikkka around us still); Paul's defense of 1963 Labour Britain as if better than its post-colonial spawn comes across as a feeble last stand given Beatlemania was breaking out at that exact moment; sexual revolution as Burgess sends up in a creepy anticlerical dance already's roaring in.

For that era it might have packed a punch. The bisexual themes, ambiguous poses of more than one figure, the frank depictions of desire and lust, and the jaded takes on the supposed superiority of jazz as emblematic of an oppressed people and the terrors perpetrated in an early form of anti-U.S. leftist rhetoric before the hippies had emerged full frontal flurry all prove Burgess' observations of pop culture, as one'd expect given what followed when Clockwork's film broke out in the drugged counterculture (likely its fans less educated in the nuances of Augustine vs. Pelagius missed his subtle critiques on the big screen), distinguished him among his erudite and elite contemporaries. Despite being far from stellar, even herein, he earns respect for smarts, and presciently pinpointing.

[Noah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really funny and full of clichés.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honey for the Bears, published originally in 1963, is meant to be commentary on the cold war. Burgess mocks both communism and capitalism in an effort to state the universal truth that The State is ultimately The State and people are ultimately people; the more different our social views and constructs, the more apparent the uniformity of humanity. The commentary isn't veiled in the slightest, and I suppose his point comes across. Perhaps it was even poignant in 1963, and I can only imagine it would have been at least mildly controversial, not only for its political statement, but also its commentary on sexual identity.

But it isn't the reason to read this book. The reason to read the book is because Anthony Burgess is such a master with language, such a clever storyteller, so darkly perverse, and so damn funny. I think Burgess could write a novel about a bowl of soup, and it would be wildly entertaining. The way he uses words is entertaining in an of itself. the plot could almost be considered afterthought, if it weren't so indulgently wacky. I laughed out loud more times than I can count, and I held my breath in anticipation more than once. I breezed through it because I just didn't want to put it down.

No, it isn't A Clockwork Orange. The social commentary isn't as astute, and the story, while every bit as bizarre, isn't executed as well. The end of the second act is a gloriously satisfying mess, so strange, so off the beaten path that it has to be believed. I'd probably mark this around 3.5 stars. It's maybe not one of the greatest Literary works I've ever read, but it was a delightfully good time.

[Perry Whitford · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lively Cold War satire featuring a naive English antique dealer who becomes enmeshed in a fish out of water / farmer in the city style comedy farce.

Paul Hussey and his American wife take a trip to Leningrad to sell some dresses on the black market for a dead friend's widow, only for things to go awry from the outset as he runs up against a pair of secret policemen and she falls into the clutches of an unusually attentive hospital.

When Burgess wrote this entertaining if ultimately flimsy novel Russia was probably at the height of her Cold War prestige, with burly Kruschev in Cuba and Yuri Gagarin in space ('in the West you still haven't put a man into orbit').

Paul meets all sorts of shady characters, drinks more than he should (though not as much as your average Russian), is given cause to question his own sexuality, and learns a few lessons about the differences between Russia and the West, if any.

Crazy things happen involving false teeth, lesbian doctors and burly cross-dressers, but Burgess also has some important things to say about the nature of freedom, and how the individual and the state are always at odds, regardless of the political ethos:

'Ah, nonsense. The state was a twisted wire coronal a child would wear on its head. People were people.'

He also has the descriptive chutzpah of a real showman, so the writing is full of fizz and energy. Who else could describe a woman's naked breasts as moving 'like the eyes of some strabismic Mack Sennet comedian.'

I would suggest that nobody else would.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 'hero' of this story undertakes a trip to Russia to do a favour for the widow of his close friend. Carrying suitcases full of dresses, he hopes to sell them on the 'black market', and to make a financial killing. The Russians are eagerly awaiting his arrival, but his reception in the country is not quite what he had anticipated.

This excellent, highly entertaining novel, written in 1963, takes a realistic but warmly sympathetic look at life in Kruschchev's USSR. The plot is cleverly devised and the writer's language is rich. As in other novels by Burgess, his knowledge of linguistics and phonetics is entertainingly employed to great effect.

[Warwick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slightly disappointing. There aren't the usual linguistic fireworks that you expect from Burgess, although a few sentances do catch the ear. In terms of plot it's a rather loose jaunt through Soviet-era St Petersberg, with plenty of smuggling and secret police, although the book never gets as exciting as those words would suggest. Burgess has treated the Cold War more successfully in Any Old Iron, or Earthly Powers for that matter. Still, this one's not without interest and some of the comic set-pieces are quite nicely handled.

[Teresa De Armas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I looooooved it! Burgess is the bomb. My favorite things:
1. I needed to have a dictionary handy while reading. I <3 expanding my vocabulary.
2. The story takes place mostly in Leningrad and Burgess thoroughly wraps you up in Soviet culture, complete with a slightly grimy feeling of being in a run down city.
3. Hilarious.

This book makes me want to read "A Clockwork Orange" which would have seemed frightening before. If you're into Russia, satire, ambiguous sexuality and the black market, this book is for you.

[craige · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was totally wacky and awesome. Highly recommend.

[Thomas Bergvinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me forever to finish this one, but that's my fault, not the book's. In true Burgessian fashion, it gets better the further you go. Worth the read. Burgess seemed to really understand Russia in a way that surprised me.

[Ümit Sevgi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maalesef biraz demode kalmış bir kitap. Soğuk savaş zamanında Rusya'da geçiyor. Okurken isimler salataya dönüyor. Burgess'den bekleneceği gibi güçlü ve eğlenceli bir kurgusu yok.

Unfortunately, it's a bit dated. It's set in Russia during the Cold War. While reading, the names turn into a jumbled salad. It does not have strong and funny fiction as expected from Burgess.

[Gunes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Başka bir zamanın kitabı. Yazıldığı dönem okusaydım ya da en azından soğuk savaş devam ederken okusaydım daha çok beğenebilirdim. Karakterler eğlenceliydi. Olaylardan daha çok karakterler okuttu kitabı.

[severyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Meh.

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anthony Burgess's "Honey for the Bears" is a book that brims with intelligence, wit, and audacity, and it is my pleasure to rate it a full five stars.

Set during the peak of the Cold War, "Honey for the Bears" tells the story of Paul Hussey and his wife Belinda, a British couple who travel to Leningrad on a business trip that turns out to be anything but ordinary. It's a tale of cross-cultural misunderstandings, political intrigue, and personal transformation, all told with Burgess's trademark flair.

Burgess's prose is a delight to read. He moves effortlessly between the comic and the profound, the mundane and the extraordinary. His command of language is impressive, and he uses it to create a world that is as vivid as it is unsettling. The narrative is filled with memorable scenes, from the chaotic markets of Leningrad to the surreal landscapes of the Russian countryside.

The characters in "Honey for the Bears" are as complex as they are compelling. Paul is a flawed but endearing protagonist, a man caught between his desire for adventure and his sense of duty. Belinda, meanwhile, is a force of nature, a woman who refuses to be confined by societal expectations. The supporting characters, from the eccentric expatriates to the enigmatic Russians, are equally well-drawn.

What sets "Honey for the Bears" apart, however, is its exploration of cultural and political themes. Burgess delves into the tension between East and West, freedom and conformity, individualism and collectivism. He presents a nuanced view of the Cold War, one that avoids simplistic dichotomies and challenges the reader to question their assumptions.

In conclusion, "Honey for the Bears" is a remarkable book that showcases Burgess's talents as a storyteller, a satirist, and a cultural critic. It's a book that is as entertaining as it is thought-provoking, and it's a book that I wholeheartedly recommend. For these reasons, I am delighted to give it a well-deserved five-star rating.

[Vanyo666 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two and a half stars. Probably more of a product of its times than other books by Burgess from this prolific period, this is a slow, highly descriptive novel with a touch of situational comedy. The typically impotent and ineffectual lead caracter is a bit more pathetic than in other books and frankly quite impossible to like or relate with. The humour is drab and the depictions of the "typically russian" are perhaps iron-curtain appropriate but sound a bit dated and offensive today. Only Burgess' all-abiding love of language, coinage of verbs and expressions and some funny situations get this book to rise over the two-star level.

[Derek Bridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

This darkly comic tale of a visit to 1960s Soviet Russia has a nightmarish quality. Paul Hussey is trying to sell smuggled nylon dresses but he lurches drunkenly around the hotel bars, ballrooms and hospitals of a Leningrad that repels and seduces equally and makes him ask questions about who he is and where he belongs.

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was pretty terrible in comparison to "A Clockwork Orange" or "The Wanting Seed." The events occurring in the book had potential to be interesting, but the way it was written made it boring from beginning to end. An easy read, but a waste of time.

[Christian Schwoerke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Half a year out, I'm still smiling at the cleverness of this book. I imagine that this would make a good movie, especially with our/my nostalgia for the gritty Russia of the swinging 60s.

[Rachael C Marek · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a slog to get through. I read some reviews before I decided to give this a read, quite mixed, and I was conflicted, but wanted to give it a go given the author. Where to begin...I didn't know what to expect. The story is sort of aimless to start off, the main character, Paul is not likable, and the dated nature of some of the author's phrases, in addition to the misogyny and some of the other era specific "quirks" are hard to take at this point in time.

The novel is satire, and Burgess beats us over the head with it. It's a running commentary of what each culture thinks of the other and how they each believe they are superior to each. It takes a strange turn near the end, not at all where I thought it would lead, and then it ends.

I wanted to finish the novel, but knew early on that I wouldn't find it a satisfying read, but I just had to know. I should have set it aside, but I was determined to discover the point of it all. I was hoping to find Burgess's dark humor, or something that would make the work worth the effort. Alas, no. This was not for me.

[Henrique Fendrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Li esse livro aos 15 anos e ele me marcou bastante por conseguir tratar com certo humor de temas sérios como a política e a sociedade. Naquele tempo, eu começava a me inteirar melhor sobre coisas como sistemas políticos e, de certa forma, eu já intuía que a minha posição seria "além" de todas as opções "disponíveis" no mundo. Influenciado pela leitura desse livro, eu cheguei até mesmo a esboçar o meu próprio romance, no qual manifestaria justamente essa posição de que nenhum dos dois principais lados trariam o resultado que a humanidade esperava. Nunca cheguei a escrever esse livro, mas ainda tenho guardado os tópicos do que deviam ser os capítulos. E isso tudo surgiu depois da leitura desse livro. Preciso reler para ver se a impressão hoje, de um adulto, é igual.

[grundoon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Satire involving a not-terribly-good clothing smuggler, set primarily in Leningrad during the Cold War, with undercurrent themes of sexual orientation. It's a little tough to find sympathy for a protagonist with such formulaic approaches to women, and nobody's going to put this toward the top of Burgess's work, but it does pretty much nail cultural dissonance and has its moments.

[Ohan Hominis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really great novel if you're interested in getting a satirical western account of communist Russia and the western reaction to it.
There is a laugh slipped into nearly every page. It's ridiculous, but not gratuitously absurd. Nothing is quite surreal enough to fail hitting close enough to home to be funny.

[Ryan Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

go sell some dresses in communist russia. what could go wrong.

[Keith Currie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An English antique dealer's misadventures in Leningrad in the early 1960s: a farce - very funny, very politically incorrect, filled with sagacity.

[H. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Because somebody writes words does not mean they should be read. Poor characters, worthless plot and jokes that clank. This is a disaster of a book. There should be zero stars.

[Bonnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is clearly a product of its time and has not aged well. I didn't find it funny or witty, just boring and kind of gross. Not a fan.