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Bella Pollen
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Book
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Publisher | Pan | ||
ISBN | 9780330519069 | ||
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Reviewer
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Jean
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Synopsis
In the summer of 1979, a tamed grizzly bear is tempted by the lure of freedom and the wild open sea . . .
Meanwhile, the sudden death of British diplomat Nicky Fleming has left his wife closed down with shock. Relocated from Cold-War-riven Germany to a remote Hebridean island, Letty Fleming is haunted by the unthinkable - was it an accident, murder or suicide? And how can she ever begin to explain to her three children that their father may have betrayed his country?
Struggling to find solace in a place she loves, Letty begins to unravel the mystery of Nicky's death, but her determination to protect the children from the truth blinds her to the demons they are already battling.
As the family's secrets threaten to tear them apart, it is only the strange but brilliant Jamie who manages to hold on to the one thing he knows for sure: his father has promised to return, and Nicky Fleming was a man who never broke a promise . . .
Review
I have always loved wild and deserted places, especially if they are islands. They are exciting. There is nothing more therapeutic for the soul, than being close to nature in a wild place. So it is not surprising that I could empathise with Letty (Leticia) in Bella Pollen's ‘The Summer of the Bear'.
Letty, bereft after the death of her husband, Nicky, fled back from the hustle and bustle of Bonn, where she had been stifled and intimidated by life as a diplomat's wife to an inherited family house in the Outer Hebrides; a place where the way of life and the local people were just the same as she had always remembered, and where the stability was a comfort to her. It was 1979.
Lost in a bubble of grief, Letty is unable to give her three children the support they need either to deal with their own grief or to cope with the problems of adolescence. Their isolation highlights the siblings' individual behavioural characteristics and the rocky relationships between them.
Georgie, the oldest, is long suffering and patient. She is approaching adulthood, and longing to escape to university and new relationships. Jamie, the youngest, is creative and unique. He is dyslexic and on the autistic spectrum and has difficulty interpreting the messages from the euphemisms surrounding the death of his beloved Dada. Alba, the brooding middle child, is angry and venomous; jealous of her sister and embarrassed by her brother.
Throughout the book, the bear, escaped from his gentle owner, a wrestler, sensitively observes proceedings whilst trying to survive alone.
Bella Pollen expertly produces a feel-good factor at the end of a harrowing book. The many strands are cleverly twisted and knotted through the story, and neatly unravelled at the end, when a life and death crisis manages to catapult everyone into action and out of their parallel universes.
‘The Summer of the Bear' is a detective story on several levels, with a spiritual thread weaving through. It is set in a real environment clearly intimately known to the author, in the background of The Cold War.
It is not surprising that I really enjoyed this book. A decade before the story was set, I visited these islands twice, and quite possibly even met some of the local characters.
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