The Bear Comes Home: A Novel

by Rafi Zabor

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: "A hilarious, richly imagined bear's eye view of love, music, alienation, manhood and humanity . . . that recalls Pynchon at his most controlled."—Publishers Weekly

The hero of this sensational first novel is an alto-sax virtuoso trying to evolve a personal style out of Coltrane and Rollins. He also happens to be a walking, talking, Blake- and Shakespeare-quoting bear whose musical, spiritual, and romantic adventures add up to perhaps the best novel, ursine or human, ever written about jazz. "Poignant and touching moments combine with hilarious descriptions of the bear's struggle in a story that anyone — whether familiar with jazz or not — will find compelling and entertaining."—David Amram, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Zabor's knack for detail makes the absurd premise believable . . . and neatly turns the weighty subject — the painful and ungainly growth of an artist — into a comic gem."—The New Yorker  "In fluent, witty prose Zabor conveys with remarkable vividness the texture of group improvisation. . . . It swings."—A. O. Scott, New York Newsday "Sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you. Get the Bear."—David Nicholson, Washington Post  "Zabor . . . conveys the mingled joy and terror of musical improvisation. He also displays a mean wit."—New York Times Book Review One of the Los Angeles Times Book Review's 100 best books of 1997 Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

Genres: Fiction, Music, Fantasy, Novels, Humor, Jazz, Magical Realism

478 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 1997

About the author

Rafi Zabor (born Joel Zaborovsky, August 22, 1946) is a Brooklyn, New York–based music journalist - and musician-turned-novelist.
Rafi Zabor was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He has worked and recorded as a jazz drummer and written about music for Musician, Playboy, and the Village Voice, and about dervishes in Istanbul for Harper's. His novel, The Bear Comes Home, won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1998 and was voted one of the Los Angeles Times's Best Books of the Year. He still lives in Brooklyn, where he is finishing the second volume of I, Wabenzi.

Reviews

[William2]

A portrait of the artist as a young bear. He's a jazz musician, an alto saxophonist of genius, with a rich inner life. The writing is without pretension and so far wholly chronological. Author Zabor has an astonishing ability not only to make jazz come alive on the page, but to catch his hero's most transient angst in mellifluous sentences. The Bear's inner voice, his self-loathing, runs deep and profound.

He becomes somewhat unhinged. He is falling, disintegrating when slammed in prison, for what are the authorities to do with an intelligent bear alto saxophonist? Right, hide him away. Behind bars his love of jazz feels gone, expunged. It's a stirring yet sad interval. I understand many readers find the book funny. So far, I do not, which is not to say that the humor isn't well handled here, but that on this first reading it's the Bear's musings that I find so deeply affecting. It is that frequency to which I am tuned.

Belay that, I just got my first laugh on page 122. The Bear has just asked the old Austrian doctor to help him break out of jail. The doctor demurs. Here's the exchange:

"There is one eppel you did not eat," said [Dr.] Friedman, casting an eye down upon a fold of brown army blanket. If you don't mind, it vould freshen my breaths."

"By all means," said the Bear, passing him the apple. "By all means cover up the inconvenient smell of internal rot, failed will, suspect sentiment."

This is one irritable if articulate bear. Later, sprung with élan by musicians and friends dressed as EMTs, he hides out at admirer Iris' apartment in Peter Cooper Village where the atmosphere is charged with interspecies lust. His old pal, Jones, who won the Bear as a cub years ago in a card game, has arranged a top-flight recording contract. An earlier LP—the novel was published in 1997—has sold out overnight. The Bear's going big-time. He's given the chance to record with Jack DeJohnette and Charlie Haden. He composes several pieces and writes out the music for a quartet.

Problem is the Bear still feels estranged from his talent. The jailhouse has taken its toll. Unfortunately, for those around him—luckily for the reader—the ursine instrumentalist is of a most choleric temperament. You might say he's bearish. Nothing can be easily done. Everything's an imposition. This induces misery in Jones and everyone else except for the blissful musicians, who inhabit a realm of their own. During the recording session he's so out of touch with his mojo that he can only perform by way of a conscious imitation of himself. Eventually things swing again.

Here the writing becomes striking. The prose becomes so descriptive about music that in the mind's ear one can almost hear it. It's unlike anything I've ever read before. And then there's the sex. Interspecies sex between woman and bear that is anything but bestial. It's such a peculiar interlude, so new, that I found myself not at all bored as I so often am by human fictional schtuppings. Especially well told is the sense of lover Iris's fragility. It's ambiguous, but if I'm reading it right, there seems to be something of a history of taboo-breaking with her. In that sense then she's the perfect—if rather neurotic—match for the Bear. But it doesn't bode well for the future, does it? When she arrives at the Bear's bed she is described as wearing a "winding sheet." Uh-oh!

The jazz, much of the stuff the novel revels in, was already classic when the book was published in 1997. (Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk etc.) The jazz argot comes across as dated, too, so Zabor's careful not to overdo it. The book may read better once the period in which it has been set is beyond living memory. Who knows, it may become a Don Quixote of its time. I certainly think the Bear has that kind of iconic potential. The novel really sings. For example, there are so many, the sequence in which Jones meets Mr. Big in the midtown offices of Megaton Records is astonishing. The details are pitch perfect.

But here comes the cognitive dissonance. The Bear is fully imbued with the thoughts and impulses of a human, yet he is a bear. This duality smacks the reader upside the head a bit when he or she comes to passages like this one on p. 257. The downstairs tenant, a photographer—the Bear's living upstate with Iris now, closer to nature—shows up "in the early evening with two teenage girls who looked like they might fancy being models."

The Bear found it morally offensive and knew that it could lead to trouble – outraged parents, charges of statutory rape, police. He wasn't about to barge in there, but he made a mental note to have a serious talk with the man the next time he found him alone.

Now, it would be impossible for the Bear, given what we know of his socialization, to think those thoughts. Fact, it is said, is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be plausible. Well, here author Zabor breaks that rule, just tosses it out. It is impossible for the reader in this case to lend plausibility to the scenario. Just like that the writer has mucked with the fabric of the novel's believability. Yet we read on, why? Somehow it happens. Very confounding. . .

[Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such an unusual novel. The protagonist is an intelligent, talking bear, called the Bear or just Bear, who plays jazz professionally on the alto sax, falls in love with a woman named Iris and faces many of the typical relationship challenges. For some, such a description would be enough to warn them off and I can understand, but this is a novel worth considering.

I am not a jazz aficionado, nor do I play a musical instrument or even read music. So I did not have much knowledge or experience with jazz or with a professional musician’s lifestyle or challenges. But from my limited perspective, this novel does a phenomenal job of providing that insight. You are introduced to many of the Jazz greats, the individuals who defined Jazz or introduced significant changes to this art. I found this insight into this world quite intriguing. Even more of an accomplishment, this novel gives you a feel for what it is like to play jazz, to be part of a jazz band and to be part of the creative process of creating jazz that takes place up on stage. I feel I have some understanding now of this art form and what makes it special. Will I start listening to it as a result? I will look for an opportunity to go to a club to hear it played live.

Beyond this introduction to Jazz, The Bear Comes Home gave me a chance to experience the life of a professional musician and the life of an artist. These experiences are so different from the life I have led and so once again reinforced why I enjoy reading.

With all the positives, the novel felt very wordy in places. Some scenes seemed much longer than they needed to be. The descriptions of playing jazz, while integral to what made the novel special, were exhausting at times. I also found the relationship between Bear and Iris to be frustrating. There was so little insight on the part of either party into what was wrong and the part they each played in the problems. They talked about talking but seemed to never do it.

I found this novel very enjoyable in parts, but at times tedious. For me, the whole was both unique and worthwhile.

[Paul Secor · Rating 3 out of 5]

A jazz saxophonist bear who's trying to make it as a musician and who's trying to find a place in the human world. Even if we're not bears, I'm sure that many of us can identify with problems dealing with the latter endeavor.
The Bear Comes Home is a worthy effort but, for my tastes, it's way overwritten and could have used a good deal of editing.
On the positive side, it did get me listening to a lot of music I hadn't listened to in quite some time - some very good, some not as good - but I'm glad that the novel reopened my ears.

Listening samples (of the very good):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOKjT...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYoQE...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjmkD...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXnog...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB0Sq...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0efc...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddRSn...

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Besides the bear sex - notably less powerful than the ursinine lovemaking in Stanley Elkin's classic The Making of Ashenden (which stands beside/behind this book the way Kafka's Metamorphosis stands with the stories of Bruno Schulz) - what makes this novel revolutionary for me is its immense capacity for paraphrase. Meaning: jazz. I do not totally get it. But the descriptions of playing/practicing/listening in TBCH make my ignorance of the turtlenecked art unimportant, since they explain what's happening in a way that is feels both precise and totally analogous. It's like I'm blind, and someone's describing to me, not just what a painting looks like, but what it feels like - or rather, what it feels like to paint. Which is sort of the point of prose, right, which like the Rennaisance explorers it came of age with has always had as one of its basic goals the translation of wilderness experience into arable, bearable (sorry) words...?

[Alexis Hall]

This is a jazz book - by which I mean, basically incomprehensible.

It is about a bear who plays the saxophone. And also about jazz. And, presumably, about some things, symbolic or otherwise.

It's weird as fuckity but I kind of love. I think you have to read it like the listen to jazz, you know? Not really looking for sense, just for something that means something to you, picking up your own patterns, your own beauties, within some that may seem strange, random, or discordant.

Also. Bear who plays the sax. You got that right, right?

I should also say there's some ... unexpectedly detailed (though fully loving and consensual) bear-and-woman-action that I was, err, that I will never really be prepared for.

But it has a resonant strangeness. For anyone who has ever felt strange.

Also it contains this piece of writing which I deeply love:

In the meantime, the Bear had attained the Avenue, where blinding, brilliant traffic travelled like a line of light from north to south, as if between worlds. But it was Jacob who saw the ladder, wrestled with the angel, and obtained a birthright under false pretenses. The Bear had done none of these things. He pulled the hat brim farther down on his face and walked south beneath the vault of darkness, above him like guardians or heralds the electric signs of bars and stores- white, orange, yellow, gold, red, brilliant blue and green, occasional imperial purple - as if they were angels that had descended to earth only to hire themselves out as lures for business, possibly for reasons of pity. The Bear walked beneath them like a resolute and powerful man, the saxophone case at his side swinging like a cache of fate, love, gold or vengeance. When he realised that he could have his pick of them - that all options, attributions and possibilities actually were open to him, that he was, at the moment, exalted, liberated, free - he stopped walking for a moment, put down the saxophone case, looked gradually around him at the Avenue, raised his snout and smiled broadly, and there on the pavement stretched out his great and inevitable arms. Aah. The night entered him like honey, and he began so heartily and with such depth of pleasure that it might have been for the first time in his life, to laugh out loud.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply the finest book on the experience of creating music that I've ever read. The Bear is a phenomenally compelling and sympathetic character, the milieu that he lives in is instantly recognizable, and the passages that cover gigging and recording are transcendent. I've personally bought and distributed at least 10 copies of this book (not counting the multiple personal copies I've bought to replace ones I loaned out to friends and never got back).

I have to admit to being a bit amused by the collective pearl-clutching in other reviews over the few (vanishingly brief) scenes of bear-sex. It's an infinitesimal part of the overall work, and it's... as tasteful as you could hope for.

[Jeremy Maddux · Rating 5 out of 5]

This remains one of my favorites. I read it in a darvocet-induced haze back in 2009 and it's one of the few things I remember from those days.

Rafi Zabor's Bear is alive in the way that Salinger's Holden Caulfield is alive. He thinks and feels, plays in smoky jazz clubs, earning the respect of his fellow musicians. It's easy to forget at times that we're reading about a bear, but of course, when he retreats back to nature around the middle of the book, we see him remembering the life he'd left behind for music. This book is also notorious for the first bear on woman sex scene, written to the hilt with plausibility! You just have to read it! And when his woman is suddenly filled with a primal urge to protect her children whom she's brought with her to their hideaway in the woods? Pitch perfect writing! Some bears, after all, are known to murder cubs in order to persuade the mother back into mating again.

I can see why this won the PEN/Faulkner Award.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as a companion piece to Marian Engel's "The Bear," so I guess I'm now an expert on bear/human romantic relationships. (Until someone writes a book about a MAN who has an affaire with a female bear. Hmmm.)

I found this one to be often splendidly verbose, and often just plain wordy. After a while, I just slimmed the lengthy descriptions of numerous jazz performances. The female characters initially seemed interesting, but eventually seemed shallow and plot-driven. And though I felt a little glow of personal satisfaction whenever I recognized the sources of the Bear's MANY literary references, I think that in real life at least one of his pals would have said, "Huh?"

But the Bear himself is a unique and very likable character, and I certainly enjoyed the way the author brought him to life.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

As the title suggests, the hero of this novel is a bear. But he is no ordinary bear; he is a pants wearing talking bear who is shy, literate, mystically inclined and plays the alto-saxophone. Arrested one night for sneaking into a New York jazz club and jamming with some of the resident musicians without a valid permit, Bear is thrown into jail where he discusses philosophy with the prison psychiatrist whilst pining for fresh salmon before being sprung by a group of supporters who spirit him off to a house near to Woodstock to live with his human girlfriend. Once there Bear cuts an album with his band before heading off into the Midwest on a promotional tour.

Zabor, a jazz drummer and music journalist, introduces us to a number of real-life jazz musicians and obviously knows a lot about jazz music and the existential angst that comes from dancing and passing the hat on New York's mean streets in order to make a living in the music industry. There is the frustration of constant practice and the occasional epiphanies of creation. Most of the human characters are cool and cynical, tolerant and likeable. There is a duality about the Bear as the author explores human nature, sometimes animal sometimes saint.

I should point out at this juncture that I'm not a jazz fan so large parts of this novel left me totally perplexed and whilst I know that many jazz jams can be rambling I believe that they do have an overall structure if only a loose one. Therefore whilst the initial idea was interesting as the story progressed I found it overly verbose with far too many navel-gazing sections on the imperfections of love, art and the sleaziness of the music business. Nor did I particularly enjoy the open ended finale. That said, there are also moments of satiric genius which were enough to see me through to its conclusion however unsatisfactory.

[Eric Likkel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's rare to find a jazz player who can articulate the experience of improvisation and ensemble playing so well through written language. Jazz critics are great at articulating what they hear, but in "The Bear...", Zabor writes from the perspective of the player. I enjoyed a crazy plot full of very believable characters, and it was humorous to me how Zabor acknowledged, through the encounters between the bear and various people in the story, the implausibility of a bear that not only talks, but plays a sax, and improvises at an advanced level! Of course, I thought it was a great social allegory, too.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite book now and I am reading it as slowly as possible so it will last longer. I'm about halfway through.

update: this is my favorite book that I will cherish and reread to the end of my days.

SPOILER ALERT ******************

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I would like to address the problem of Iris.
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The Bear is so loveably drawn that we want fiercely for Iris to love him. We rejoice when this success seems apparent, and hiss when she falls short of our wish fulfillment.

But the Bear loves someone ambivalent like Iris precisely because he is insecure. And this is his miserable conundrum throughout the entire book. He is, after all, a bear. Yet even when he proves himself smart, he fails to secure love, audiences, friends... because he's utterly Other. No wonder that in romance, he cannot help but magnetize himself to the rejection he so deeply needs to transform.

DON'T READ ANY MORE UNLESS YOU'VE READ THE BOOK

Iris' long cold winter of standoffishness in the latter half of the book disappoints the reader, but consider: she starts out a scientist who understands a gifted bear biologically, becomes a friend who gets him philosophically, and then suddenly finds herself in his arms a woman, still with her own baggage of hurt to claim, who forgets all of her original intellectual ambition of discovering his mind and loses herself in the exultation of their lovemaking, only to freeze up and second-guess her helpless and terribly vulnerable desire for, after all, a bear! A creature that humans are ingrained to fear. He will consume her! Pull back and protect!

But here's the rub. He's NOT just a bear. He is in fact an amazing musician. She acknowledges it consciously, but on a gut level she hasn't yet grappled with how valuable his work actually is, and how they've got, not just a madcap love affair, but an actual honest marriage that crowns her... a wife. His work will be her mission: the mind she acknowledged in him from the start! so in the end she must and will SERVE... a bear! Who will consume her not just physically but her entire soul! This devastatingly fast and thorough shedding of petals from around her scarred little bud renders her too viscerally naked to sleep peacefully with the danger of him any longer. If this enigma is to be her husband, she must test him, principally to make sure her children are safe, and she must test his constancy. Is he capable of being a true and generous partner to her, daughters and wounds and all? Does this rock star of a bear really want her, and her alone? Iris is the perfect hiding enchanted princess to force a self-absorbed genius to get over himself. Sorry you didn't get more detail on her muted shutdown. This is the Bear's story, after all. And bear in mind, although she keeps him at arm's length, she doesn't abandon him. She never turns others against him. She shelters him in his hibernation.

And the Bear proves himself true of heart. He redeems his initial awkwardness, works to overcome his immature egotism, win her and her catty daughters, to be the husband and father they need, because despite her seeming fickleness, he KNOWS she loves him. He was there!

But it still doesn't break the spell. At last, he can win her only by letting her go. Because you can't choose someone all by yourself. Romantic choice must be mutual: a yielding between two sovereignties. If you chose someone but they didn't choose you, you can't imprison them with the gravity of sulking rejection. You simply have to go on with life. The Bear finally lets go of needing Iris. "Needn't," sings the bird. NEED NOT. The magic of another animal's music transcends the Bear's heartbreak while Iris has her heart jiggled open by the sudden joke of a lifetime that illuminates the conundrum of their situation. Only then is the attraction between them freed up enough that Iris can escape feeling trapped, find her whole center in levity, and finally, open hearted and flying, embrace the bear.

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final” ~ Rilke

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and enlightening novel about the sexes, the species, and music. You know, about life in general. I have to say that I've seldom been so excited by a novel while in the act of reading it. The characters live on the page, the evocation of life in the city, the country and on the road are vivid and exciting. The writing about everything, especially music, is terrific. The humor is genuinely funny, and the pathos is genuinely moving. Hell, there's even a listener's guide with information on the real life music that the novel weaves into its patterns. What can I say? I wanted a beer with the Bear.

But. The final 50-odd pages are agony to read, as the Bear's lady love, Iris, proves herself quite unexpectedly to be one of the most colossally selfish bitches I've encountered in literature or, thankfully, in life. After a specific point in the novel she begins playing head games with the Bear that the women of Sex And The City would dismiss as being just too third grade. To make it worse, no one in the novel or out of it thinks to call Iris out on her outlandishly awful behavior, and everyone, including the novel itself, winds up diminished as a result.

[Ole Pogie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not your average run-of-the-mill novel. It's totally different from the sort of thing I normally read and has some very strong upsides but also some definite downsides. Basically the story follows a talking bear who plays jazz on his alto sax. Much of the book is told through dialog between the bear and his friend Jones as well as with members of the bears jazz band. I really enjoyed the banter between the characters because it included a lot of sarcasm and humorous ridicule, typical of what you often hear between friends. The book also went heavily into musical phrasing, mostly about jazz, with a lot of jargon that I wasn't familiar with and, occasionally, even showed musical scores to illustrate the point. Unfortunately, I can't read music so it didn't make sense to me. The story also included a love affair between the bear and a woman named Iris that went into a little too much graphic detail than was necessary. Overall though, this was quite a good book that was very imaginative and well written.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Talking Bear with a talent for jazz -- start for the novelty, stay for the words

The words...the phrasings ...are exquisite. Even when you have no idea of what they mean (as in context of jazz ruminations cast before the non-musician, philosophical ramblings, and the vast expanse of literature, religion, and nature). The opening sections are the strongest. Mid-sections retain the beauty and precision of the narrative but wander a bit overwrought into the joy of sex and love. The final downhill run combines human outlook with otherworldliness only to crash abruptly in a premature end.

And yet I can't help but recommend the read. It is too rare and beautiful a prose to overlook. Writing today tends to be much spared, more concise. You will either get lost in the words and revel (or despair and run for cover elsewhere).

[RichVT · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started well, with the author selling the notion of a saxophone playing bear without apology or explanation. The descriptions of a jazz band playing were initially interesting to a non musician like myself but then became tiresome piles of jargon I did not understand. The endless name dropping of jazz legends I recognized but did specifically associate with anything didn’t help. Finally it seemed grossly overwritten and each major scene was more fatiguing than interesting. I never did understand the relationship with Iris from her point of view and was most interested in Jones who was underdeveloped. All in all I never connected with this book despite enjoying the Bear .

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know much about jazz or bears. This made me want to listen to jazz and meet some bears.

[Julius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly a masterpiece beyond our mortal comprehension, and my most treasured acquisition from the one dollar bookstore. Really a huge step forward for bear culture.

[Dagueneau Jewell · Rating 3 out of 5]

With the exception of some human-ursine sex scenes, an interesting and entertaining novel.

[Tristan Wolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let's start with what's good. Tons of philosophical ideas told in a myriad ways. Riffs on riffs about riffs, in detailed notes (pun intended) of jazz. In-jokes about jazz musicians (my favorite being when a member of the Bear's band puts on a disc of Keith Jarret's trio and he "he began imitating Jarrett’s vocal impression of a goat being horribly tormented with a sharp stick in its privates"). The sense of Everyman's philosophical journey being told through someone who isn't even a man (by his own insistence). The lyrical game of using obscure words and various non-words to keep one turning to the dictionary or Google to track down unusual quotes and references.

Now the bad. Overlong and tortuous turns of rumination that makes one wonder why the Bear wasn't an Oxford don of literature and liberal arts. The sense that author Zabor has a significant envy of Umberto Eco's all-but-impenetrable prose. An ending that, with the last sentence, was a letdown that made me regret much of the effort involved in pursuing this mad ursine through his self-discovery.

And then there's Iris.

Bear's romantic obsession is the human woman Iris. She is, from start to finish, the type of female who is... well, if I used the correct term for her, I would likely be kicked off the site. Her entire character can be summed up in the self-description, found at the end of a rumination of her life up to that point. The Bear has made ecstatic, passionate, body-transcending love to her; his thoughts, emotions, physical care, and tenderness show him to be consummately, devoutly in love with every aspect of her. Her internal summation: "So, of course, she had fucked a talking bear."

The greatest tragedy of the entire book is that this supra-human bear lost himself to a human woman who, from the first moment, was manipulative, using, self-involved, conniving, self-serving, and utterly bad for him. The Bear's triumphs were made in spite of her, not because of her. The entire book may be taken as a cautionary tale, because Iris makes her true colors known throughout. Ah, if only the Bear had heeded W. B. Yeats' warning: Never give all the heart.

On the off chance this could be considered a spoiler, I'll hide why I think that the ending line was the single greatest let down possible.

The Bear is convinced, at long last, that he's lost Iris; she has screamed at him, then laughed at him, and there is nothing left to him. He leaves the house, down the path, a little ways into the woods, and there he resolves himself, feeling embittered but realizing that it's what has to be. He must be without her. Then, in its own paragraph, the last line: "Iris swept into the clearing still laughing, her arms open wide, and fairly skipped across the intervening distance to embrace him." BULLSHIT. There is no "happily ever after" with this fraudulent, vicious, deceitful I-won't-use-that-word-no-matter-how-much-she-epitomizes-it. It was a huge disappointment. He shoulda knowed beddah.

'Nuff said.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

So there's this talking bear, y'see, and when he's just a cub he gets separated from his talking bear mom and falls in with this down-on-his-luck jazz promoter named Jones. They live in squalor perform in the streets of New York for donations. But the Bear reads philosophy and learns to blow the alto sax. He is smarter than the av-er-age bear; erudite, ironic, perceptive and a hell of a musician. This book is funny, touching, authentic, engaging and above all musical. The Bear loves jazz. and the passages where he plays are the best representation of music on the page that I've ever read. The reader goes with the Bear into his improvisations, exults with him when he flies, and despairs when his performance is pedestrian. He honors greats he has learned from listening to--Bird, Trane, Mingus, Monk, Rollins and a host of others--he gets to play with Charlie Haden. Zabor displays a depth of technical musical knowledge as the Bear writes and create music on the page and in the moment.
The Bear's life is a jazz improvisation itself, as he repeatedly builds complex structures that break down under internal and external pressures. He becomes a successful musician, seeking meaning in his music and passion with his sweetheart. The interspecies romance is completely believable--the Bear is a hell of a romantic. The experience of being a bear in a world of humans is handled well and often funny, but the Bear has the same motivations and passions has any being. Sometimes, though, he just has to be a bear. While some might critique the writing as too wordy and call the ending a bit arbitrary, to me it felt like a jazz show through and through. This unique book is unlike anything I have read before; it's completely deserving of it's Pen/Faulkner award.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ya, you're probably wondering why I have it a five star rating when it took me just about the whole year to read it. It's because I liked it, and I thought it was a very good book. I'm the type that doesn't want to end books that I'm enjoying - separation anxiety. I am sure that there can't possibly be a book such as this again. Not an easy book to read; even with my music background; this book was musically technical using jazz lingo throughout and referring to the greats such as John Coltrane, Sunny Rollins, & Thelonious Monk just to name a few. The Bear Comes Home is set in pretty much the current time as when it was written and melds real life and fantasy in a reality sort of way of the lives of jazz musicians (and Bear musicians too). Definitely going to miss this one!

[Andy Oram · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, this book had everything. Characters I really want to follow through life. An engaging plot that works wonderfully by its own logic, even though (like so many contemporary novels) it's based on an oddball premise. Best of all, a deep communion with great music, expressed in luminous language (much better than my style in this review!). Jazz musicians can enjoy this as insiders, while people who don't know jazz would (I believe) run out and buy all the jazz recordings they could after reading this. The ending gets a bit too sweet for my taste, but the book is so great that I can't imagine any good way to bring it to an end.

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my 'must have' book for jazz lovers. It contains a bear, a saxaphone and a love story. What more could you ask for?

Written in a series of long riffs, like improv on the page Rafi Zabor actually pulls off the almost impossible task of writing jazz, rather than writing about jazz. If John Coltrane is your man, this is your book!

[M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the strangest books, in a good way, I've ever read, both in subject and in style. Sometimes the author is painfully verbose and sometimes so straight to the point and with such literary genius it makes you want to keep reading. I could think of a dozen ways to edit this book, but, overall an enjoyable read.

[Jonfaith · Rating 1 out of 5]

The precocious sheen fell off of my life in the late 90s. Evidence of this can be found in the fact that I checked out this book, what, ten years ago? I read it, quickly even, and remember finding fault with the jazz references. What could i have been thinking? Please, I hope my judgment doesn't allow any such wavers in the near future.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this on holiday many years ago, but I remember it as an entertaining surreal fantasy and a book that justifies the description unique - unless anyone knows any other tales of bears that play jazz.

[Deb Montague · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not finish this book. I tried. I took it with me everywhere I knew I'd have time to read. I could not get into it. The premise sounds wonderful. I love jazz. A saxophone playing bear who quotes John Coltrane and Ornette Colman? How could it fail?
I disliked the main characters. I'm not sure what the overall premise is because I gave up at page 110. I get that unresolved inner turmoil can cause a character to do things. It's what drives plot. But there were pages where I simply wanted them to stop with the inner monologuing about their issues and try to resolve them. When things changed in the second section, I thought, maybe, there would be some character action. Nope. Still this inner monologuing.
I've read Joyce. I've read Dostoevsky. I've read volumes and volumes of psychological self-help books. If these people crossed my path, I would not be friends with them. There's self-analysis and there's this and I'm not interested in wading through this.
Pity. I really wanted to like this book but I can't.

[keith koenigsberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Excellent story, generally very well-written though I have a few gripes. The narrative concerns a bear who plays saxophone, and is trying to make it in a human world. The character lends himself as a perfect metaphor for the outsider, and this is where Zabor excels; his descriptions of isolation and misunderstanding are among the best. However, the book overall suffers from the shallowness of the secondary characters (mostly the women) and over-witty text. It reads like Zabor went back to self-edit 100 times, over the course of years, and inserted additional wit and references to philosophy, literature, and music. The density of the intellectual clutter and in-jokes is suffocating, and the wit thrown around by the characters is unrealistically sophisticated and smarmy.

[Christopher Ouellette · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's about a bear that can talk and play the saxophone.

I did a couple years of jazz band and music theory in high school. Without that, I would have no idea what the author was talking about in a good chunk of the book. I don't know if I could recommend this book to somehow without that background. My jazz knowledge was very limited, so even I didn't recognize most of the name drops in the book.

My only other gripe there is beastiality. I skimmed through those sections.

Other than those two things, the book was really good. It wasn't as silly as I thought it would be given the premise.

[Robert Kemp · Rating 2 out of 5]

Several things I didn't like about this book and some things I did. The main character being a talking bear is weird. Not really my thing. That he plays jazz sax is interesting. I think the author did a fine job of capturing detail in describing jazz soloing and musician interaction (verbal and non-verbal). I also felt the book was a bit wordy, and it seemed to me the author wrote it with thesaurus in hand, finding all the uncommon words to squeeze in. Perhaps there is a deeper meaning to this book that simply escapes me. I didn't hate it, but I was glad to finish it.