Bruce Hunter's In the Bear's House

Poetry of silence in the form of a novel

In the Bear’s House is a character-driven coming-of-age novel by poet Bruce Hunter, first published over a decade ago by Oolichan Books, now out in a reissue from Frontenac House. The life of a Deaf boy growing up on the Prairies unfolds through an accumulation of small incidents, told in alternating segments from his own point of view and that of his young mother.

The mother’s sections are in the first person, while the boy’s are in third-person. This is an interesting choice, and given a broad similarity of tone, may imply that the mother is the storyteller throughout. If true, this casts doubt on how closely we should trust the boy’s passages to represent a child’s internal experience, versus a mother’s view of it—part idealized, part fraught with concern, part an over-extension of a parent’s powers of creation into the shaping of a child’s core self. I may be off base here, but there’s something slippery about the shifting point-of-view that opens up interesting avenues for interpretation, and I felt this added a layer to what’s already an intriguing and lyrical text.

When poets write novels, it can be a bit like cooking in a kitchen where you’ve just been tempering spices—there’s a flavour that gets into everything. The poetic voice is distinctive. Readers who love the voice will love the book, while others may wonder why there’s so much coriander in the brownies. Hunter writes in a gestural style that can be quite evocative. His prose is sprinkled with sentence fragments, and at times he uses commas to indicate breath rather than strictly for the purpose of setting off a clause. I flag this here because it’s the kind of thing that delights some readers but causes others no end of irritation—as a reader, you likely know which one you are.

The child’s hearing impairment opens a window for narrative inquiry into language and silence, in lines like this one: “His grandmother and father spoke in capital letters.” Or this passage from his early years: “His little words lacked the hard sounds. All softened, like flannel.”

Over the course of 300 pages, the boy grows into maturity through the strength of familial bonds and time spent on the land. The author’s appreciation for the landscapes and people of the Kootenay Plains area comes through in the scenes set in remote cabins, jolting along in trucks or tussling with dogs in the yard. All the while, though, the world is changing as the twentieth century progresses. We see glimpses of growth towards a more diverse and multicultural Canada, but also looming threats to ecosystems and traditional lifeways.

The mother’s story has its own arc, and as we reach the last page, both of the central characters stand at the threshold of change. The “bear’s house” makes reference to what some of us might call bear country, territory where bear sign is present and it’s best to tread with respect. In this book, the bear may stand for many things, but perhaps one of those is the thing left unsaid.

Publication Details

Author: Bruce Hunter

Title: In the Bear’s House

Publisher: Frontenac House

Year: 2025 (reissue from 2009)