How long does it take to read Bear?
Marian Engel
Bear by Marian Engel takes about 2 hours 35 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 2 hours 35 minutes
An evening's read
First published 1976. 141 pages, about 38,775 words.
6 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 4 hours 19 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 2 hours 35 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 1 hour 37 minutes |
The page count is the median across 27 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Lou is a lonely librarian who spends her days in the dusty archives of the Historical Institute. When an unusual field assignment comes her way, she jumps at the chance to travel to a remote island in northern Ontario, where she will spend the summer cataloguing a library that belonged to an eccentric 19th-century colonel. Eager to investigate the estate's curious history, she is shocked to discover that the island has one other inhabitant: a bear. Lou's imagination is soon overtaken by the island's past occupants, whose deep fascination with bears gradually becomes her own. Irresistably, Lou is led along a path of emotional and sexual self-awakening, as she explores the limits of her own animal nature. What she discovers will change her life forever.
Subjects: Fiction, general, Women archivists, Fiction, Bears, Human-animal relationships, Canadian fiction
