Cynthia Ozick: The Bear Boy

Is there anything quite so sad as a man or woman denied a childhood? In Cynthia Ozick's depressing and eccentric new novel, The Bear Boy, nearly all the characters could claim they were robbed of something essential.

From the clan of German Jews around the novel's fringes to the lonely orphan at its core, Ozick's cast has grown up too fast and washes up in adulthood with a desire to be elsewhere — usually backward in time. The Bear Boy tells of the emotional greed born from these circumstances.

The character in the greatest need of a nice big hug might be Rosie Meadows, the twice-orphaned teenage narrator. After her father dies in a car crash and a family friend kicks her out, Rosie becomes an appendage to the Mitwissers, a sprawling family of refugees from Hitler's Germany in Albany, New York, in 1935. They're an odd brood. Mrs Mitwisser spends most of her time in bed, looking like she'd like to find a wormhole to the past. Anneliese, the eldest, runs the household in her place.

Several boys behave like tearaways, and a toddler with the improbable name of Waltraut spends most of her time alone. There are many unanswered questions here, ones that itch at Rosie's mind like rough wool. Why does Mrs Mitwisser stay in bed so much? What is it exactly that Mr Mitwisser studies? Why is Anneliese so bitter?

A formidable thinker whose work explores the nexus of imagination and morality, Ozick does not grant facile pleasures. A reader must patiently endure the pacing of this novel to arrive at these answers even when the plot stops to squeeze in a digression. Often, this information comes so late that we've already written off some of Ozick's characters as simply unknowable.

With the exception of Rosie, most of them have discovered a way to live outside reality — in their imaginations, their books or the past. But we can never truly enter these places — we spend our time on the outside, noses pressed to the glass.

The arrival of James Abair helps. Based on the real-life model for Christopher Robin, James is the child of a children's book author famous for his Bear Boy series — the basis of which, of course, was James. As an adult, he is a lost soul, raw with fury, ripe for his own Where Are They Now? special. He drinks and whores, embraces dissipation. He cannot burn the royalty cheques fast enough.

James' unwanted wealth and the Mitwisser family's nagging impoverishment make them, at first, a grim good match. He becomes their patron, moves them to the Bronx, helps Mitwisser set up a study so he can work in peace.

But, as Rosie observes over the course of this book, the two are more alike than they at first seemed: lonely, hungry, greedy for something the world cannot provide. James' money warps the Mitwisser family compact and eventually worms its way into Rosie's life.

Ozick has never been a cheery writer. The novel unfolds in a dreamlike pallor, the universe of a children's book gone awry. Even Ozick's Austen-like ending with a death, a birth and a marriage leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

Is there a point to the future, she seems to ask, when what glimmers most to some is their past? What makes this book so sad is that for Ozick's cast, that treasure is irretrievable. 

* John Freeman is a writer in New York.
* Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $49.99