Memoirs of a Polar Bear

September 5, 2016
Written by acclaimed Japanese-German author Tawada, this immersive, dreamy novel follows three generations of a polar bear family—grandmother, daughter, son—as each tries to balance the public pressures of circus performing with the solitary satisfactions of a literary life. In the first section, the family’s matriarch pens an acclaimed autobiography, Thunderous Applause for My Tears, which her agent, a wily sea lion, publishes without her permission. After emigrating to Canada in order to escape the oppressive heat of Berlin, she gives birth to Tosca, whose section focuses on the life of Barbara, Tosca’s innovative animal trainer. In the final section, Tosca bears Knut, an emblem for the polar bear’s plight and the ward of Matthias, his beloved caretaker. When Matthias dies suddenly, Knut must reckon with the renown of the estranged women who came before him, as well as his species’s shrinking place in a warming world. Though the sapien-centric middle portion pales in comparison, the first and third sections present a poignant blend of history and fairy tale, an inventive account of beasts often too humane for their own good.

Three generations of polar bears navigate life as celebrities among humans.Japanese author Tawada's (The Bridegroom Was a Dog, 2012, etc.) latest novel revisits her themes of cultural alienation and ephemerality as she follows three generations--grandmother, mother, and son--of intrepid polar bears, each getting a separate chapter. The grandmother, a naive but brilliant ex-circus performer who lives in the Soviet Union, writes an autobiography which becomes an overnight literary hit in Europe. Inadvertently, it leads to her political exile in Canada, where she's forced to abandon her native Russian, a language that once "remained at my side, touching soft spots within me." Her daughter, Tosca, a former ballet dancer living in East Germany, joins the circus and becomes ensconced in an intimate relationship with her emotionally fragile trainer, Barbara--the two communicate secretly, while Barbara sleeps, in a "sphere situated halfway between the animal and human worlds." As the familiar subtly descends into the bizarre, Tawada lithely undulates between past and present, subconscious and reality. In the final chapter, Tosca's estranged son, Knut, spends his days playing with Matthias, his human keeper (and stand-in mother), before a captive audience at the Berlin Zoo. Soon after Matthias is forced to leave the zoo, Knut begins to receive nightly visits from Michael, a man "as smooth and elegant as a black panther," whose hardships bear an uncanny resemblance to Knut's. It's uncertain whether Michael's omnipresence is real, a vivid apparition--sometimes he watches Knut from a cloud, other times he speaks to him from a glowing computer screen--or perhaps Knut's moral conscience personified. But this persistent mystery is what is so enchanting about Tawada's writing. Her penetrating irony and deadpan surrealism fray our notions of home and combine to deliver another offbeat tale. An absorbing work from a fascinating mind. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2016

In her latest novel, Tokyo-born, Berlin-based Tawada, winner of the Akutagawa Prize, presents an unusual cast of characters: three generations of polar bears famed behind the Iron Curtain as circus performers and writers. The Soviet-born matriarch, proud of her performance skills if annoyed by her girly outfits, wins acclaim for her autobiographical Thunderous Applause for My Tears but begins to question her life and emigrates to Canada. Daughter Tosca triumphs in East Germany with a trick called the Kiss of Death, performed with a ponytailed trainer who isn't nearly as interesting as her charge. Tosca's son, Knut, born in a Leipzig zoo and happily bonding with his human trainer in Berlin, woefully recognizes the limits of his freedom when another trainer takes over. Throughout, Tawada's sleek, matter-of-fact prose makes us feel as if there's nothing unusual about having ursine protagonists. VERDICT This engaging fable is not just for animal lovers, though Tawada quietly shames us with human beastliness.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2016
Tokyo-born, Berlin-domiciled Tawada (Facing the Bridge, 2007) returns with another fantastical and entertaining novel that combines a broken family saga, socio-political-environmental enlightenment, a treatise on writing, and bitingly well-placed satire. Seamlessly translated from German by the award-winning Bernofsky, Memoirs of a Polar Bear introduces three such animals and their most intimate humans over the course of three generations as they migrate through three continents as revealed in three chapters. The progenitor grandmother is the first to walk upright as trained by her human; she writes her autobiography, becomes an international celebrity, leaves her native Russia, and, after multiple immigrations, settles in East Germany. Her daughter, Tosca, trained in ballet, finds her greatest connection in an unusual circus act with her human, Barbara. Tosca's son, Knut, raised by Matthias in a Berlin zoo, becomes a global sensation and major merchandising opportunity. By combining real-life elements (Germany's reunification, immigration challenges, neo-Nazis) and mun-dane experiences (attending conferences, grocery shopping), Tawada makes the impossible believable; all the while, she educates, even chides her readers about the arrogant failures and blind abuses perpetrated by Homo sapiens, that idiotic species. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)