Book Review: There's a Bear in the House by Walter Kirn

There's a  Bear in the House by Walter Kirn is a book about a son and his dying father.  The father wants to live out his final days in his cabin.   I was expecting a tale of love, discovery, emotions, bonding and a whole slew of other things.  I thought it would be a poignant walk through the decline of a parent.    However, that is not what the  reader got.   The story is told in the most disjointed fashion and with very little detail.  It was almost as if the writer simply copied his personal journal and called it a book.   As the author wrote about moving his father to the cabin, he was talking about people that he never introduced which had me backtracking to try to figure out who they were.  (I never really got a true sense of all of that).   Once ensconced in the cabin, the same disjointed style of writing kept me guessing about what was happening and the point of the story that the author was trying to tell.

The book is very short and drew a very thin line between his father and this bear and the connection between them.  In fact, as I write this; I realize that the line between the two is so thin that he could have been trying to say any number of things.  ~Sigh~   Sometimes you hit a good book, sometimes you hit a clunker.   The redeeming point of this book was that it was over quickly and didn't waste a lot of my time as I kept reading trying to let the author get to the point that he was never going to get to! 

Feel free to check out my other reviews listed by Genre or Author.