Her Book Review: Louisa Meets Bear by Lisa Gornick (2015)

Why she read it: excellent review at EW.com

Would she recommend it: Yes

Her review: In my experience, the best books are those which suck you in, which provide you with a world both solid and ephemeral. Which leave you, when it’s done, mourning the world that is over when the back cover is closed.

Louisa Meets Bear is just such a book. In a series of stories connected at times most directly with each other and at times only most indirectly, Gornick reinforces just how tenuous life is, how closely life is linked with death, and how sometimes, there is that one “star-crossed” person who imprints on your life in a way that stays with you.

Such it is with the title characters, Louisa and Bear, who meet early in life in 1975 in the second story of the book, and reconnect in the last story in 2009, in a way that should be experienced and not spoiled.

Each of the characters we meet along the way is sketched out and fully -formed for us to picture and the style of each chapter differs, changing point of view, much like life. Not all narrators are trustworthy, more men than not are unreliable, children are a blessing and a curse and life, over and over we learn, is a hard series of choices, small joys and regrets.

In other words, this book is beautiful.