In a Bear's Eye

by Yannick Murphy

In 24 brief, impressionistic tales, Murphy (Signed, Mata Hari) delivers an emotional wallop. The title story concerns a widow and her young son attempting to carry on after the suicide of the husband and father-and finding a watchful bear's presence near their house more protective than menacing. Pan, pan, pan, one of the longer stories, is named for the urgency call emitted by a plane that crashes near a lake where a family of three along with the brother-in-law is vacationing. The narrator is the nervous wife, whose small son is enthralled both by the overbearing brother-in-law and by details of the plane crash. Some of the stories capture a vernacular quirkiness, such as Lester, a stream-of-consciousness narrative by an angry urban dweller who's bitter that he'll never get to see the palm trees of Barbados, or the sky's constellations (the "Big Zipper," he calls one of them), for that matter. Similarly, in The Beauty in Bulls, two men carry on a perpendicular conversation, one about bullfighting, the other about the rapturous body of a woman, that eventually dovetails into a testosterone-charged assertion of power and might. Murphy's tight, sharp sense of composition and tone renders these short takes more than mere formal exercises.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

152 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2008

About the author

Yannick Murphy is the author of the novels, The Call, Signed, Mata Hari, Here They Come, and The Sea of Trees. Her story collections include Stories in Another Language and In a Bear's Eye. Her children's books include The Cold Water Witch, Baby Polar, and Ahwhoooooooo!. She is the recipient of various awards including a Whiting Writer's Award, a National Endowment for the Arts award, a Chesterfield Screenwriting award and her story In a Bear's Eye was recently published in the 2007 O'Henry Prize Stories.

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this collection after reading the story "In a Bear's Eye" in one of my classes. It's such a beautiful story that I'd recommend getting the collection to read that alone. (There are cheap/used copies on Amazon). But overall, there were only four other stories that I liked: "Pan, Pan, Pan," "The Only Light to See By," "Whitely on the Tips," and "Real Enough."

The ones I didn't like left me confused in the same way a lot of poetry leaves me confused. Many times I'd think, "Wow those were some really pretty images, but I have no idea what happened or what the point of that was." I'm not saying stories have to have a "lesson" or anything like that, but I'd still like them to make sense and make me feel something other than lost.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know how it is often said of vegetables - and I love vegetables, by the way - that they are good for you and you should eat them? A lot of these stories were first published in The Quarterly, Agni, and Conjunctions and if that is where you imbibe your language porn you will love this collection. Artistically inclined journal editors couldn't resist these stories. And Barthes would surely have loved these unreaderly stories. For the rest of you? Sometimes vegetables taste divine. Other times they taste like, well, roughage. For the extra credit crowd: If literary debate is your game and you are playing a hand of what is a story? - ante up this collection.

[Christopher Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

In a Bear's Eye, the title story, is excellent. The others pale in comparison. They are forcibly quirky and off-putting, strange for the sack of being jarring.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw this one sitting on the new shelf at the local library and was intrigued by it but already had too many books out to take it out on that day. Of course, when I went back it was checked out. By my girlfriend!

Happy synchronicity aside, this is really a remarkable collection of stories. The language is attention-getting and nearly opaque, the stories cover a broad range of characters (one I read today: a man who shot a bear as a kid wears the bearskin on a midnight canoe trip to a cub scout camp on the other side of the lake! beat that! and there are many others in here), and they display an admiral internationalism-- several stories are set in Latin America and other foreign places, showing a real sense of place. It's an incredibly impressive, if modestly stated collection, It never sets out to blow you away with its scope, it just blows your mind one little bit at a time.

[Robert]

I only read a handful of the stories in this book and decided to stop. Nothing against the author -- she's a very good writer, but the stories themselves (at least the ones I read) didn't do much for me.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

some good - even great - stories like the title one, The Lost Breed, Aunt Germaine (which I remember reading on Vestal Review), but others I hust couldn't get into at all..

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't get it. It gets two stars because I very much enjoyed one story, but for the most part, I was scratching my head going 'huh.' Perhaps another reading years from now will help.

[Elizabeth J.]

The title story is the best short story I've read in the last ten years. Hands down.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short collection of equally short stories was difficult, in large part due to the style. Murphy pares her language down to simplicity here, talking about "the girl," "the mother," etc, rarely simplifying into pronouns or specifying with names. She employs lots of repetition. This can be very evocative and dreamlike, but can also feel super rambling. This is especially obvious during stories with more dialog, or at least internal dialog... Lester seems unhinged in the story which bears his name, while two friends watching a bullfight make Beavis and Butthead seem literate. Elsewhere the same images will repeat, while the narrative seems to desperately break away. The stories seem to have little structure, just flashes of moments that seem so disparate as to feel non sequitor from one paragraph to the next. In stories like "Jesus of the Snow," there is a heady tension and atmosphere due to these quick, unreal glimpses. More often, it makes the book a chore.

There are hidden gems here, though. I tended toward the structures which more closely approached normalcy, like "Pan, Pan, Pan," but I also did enjoy the eerie mood that this disjointed feeling brought to stories like "Walls." I also enjoyed noticing unexpected threads from disparate stories (perhaps the most obvious being the Mucuchies dogs referenced, but there are other connections unfolding as the stories rattle off). It's also undeniable that there is a largely shared mood here, something primal and earthy and just a bit haunted. Nature is always a stones throw away, and yet nothing feels natural. It's very much a text that showcases a literary talent, and one which likely rewards multiple close readings. Close readings, however, are best done when we are excited about work, and as a casual read, this was more effort than it seemed to be worth.