The Bear Came Over the Mountain (Away From Her) by Alice Munro.
Title: The Bear Came Over the Mountain (Away From Her).
Author: Alice Munro.
Genre: Novella, short stories, fiction, romance, literature.
Country: Canada.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2001.
Summary: Through Grant, a retired professor whose wife Fiona begins gradually to lose her memory and drift away from him, we slowly see how a lifetime of intimate details can create a marriage, and how mysterious the bonds of love really are.
My rating: 7/10
♥ It was the women who kept the conversation afloat. Men seemed cowed by the situation, teenagers affronted. Those being visited rode in a wheelchair or stumped along with a cane, or walked stiffly, unaided, at the procession's head, proud of the turnout but somewhat blank-eyed, or desperately babbling, under the stress of it. And now surrounded by a variety of outsiders these insiders did not look like such regular people after all. Female chins might have had their bristles shaved to the roots and bad eyes might be hidden by patches or dark lenses, inappropriate utterances might be controlled by medication, but some glaze remained, a haunted rigidity - as if people were content to become memories of themselves, final photographs.
Grant understood how Mr. Farquar must have felt. People here - even the ones who did not participate in any activities but sat around watching the doors or looking out of the windows - were living a busy life in their heads (not to mention the life of their bodies, the portentous shifts in their bowels, the stabs and twinges everywhere along the line), and that was a life that in most cases could not very well be described or alluded to in front of visitors. All they could do was wheel or somehow propel themselves about and hope to come up with something that could be displayed or talked about.
♥ But in the last few years she had developed an interest in the country itself and looked at travel guides. She read about William Morris's trip, and Auden's. She didn't really plan to travel there. She said the weather was too dreadful. Also - she said - there ought to be one place you thought about and knew about and maybe longed for - but never did get to see.