Help! A Bear Is Eating Me! [Versión Kindle]

Marv Pushkin is a jerk. He is a greedy, drug-addicted, nature-hating, member of middle-management who cheats on his wife. He is also pinned beneath his SUV, loaded up with pain-killers, while a bear is eating him alive. So begins Mykle Hansen's comedic bizarro novel, "Help! A Bear is Eating Me!"

The ambitious premise of the book is that it takes place totally in the mind of Marv Pushkin while he is being eaten. There is very little action that takes place during the story but the character of Marv makes the book completely absorbing. Marv may be a jerk, but he is a charming, talented story-teller. This is a difficult literary trick to pull off, but Hansen succeeds with impressive ease.

Hansen has a strong and engrossing writing voice. In the hands of a less talented author, a book with this premise would totally fall flat. Instead, Hansen tells an addictive story that the reader will not be able to put down.

Hansen also gives the reader a lot to think about. Marv is a caricature of one of those corporate losers that everyone encounters. Using this kind of person as a main character, Hansen satirizes many aspects of modern living. Be it money, sex, or friendship, Marv is never satisfied with what he has and is completely consumed with a desire for more material wealth.

"Help! A Bear is Eating Me!" is a unique and memorable work of absurd humor. Mykle Hansen has crafted a fascinating character study of a thoroughly unlikable person. While the reader may not sympathize with Marv, it is hard to pull away from his plight.

Ironically I just bought this book at Powell's while on a trip to Portland. The title caught my eye, and after a quick flip through the pages I decided to buy it, and I am glad I did.

The story concerns one Marv Pushkin, slimy executive and all-around jerk, who has taken his team of underlings, the wife he hates, and the woman he's having an affair with on a Team Building trip to the wilds of Alaska. He is also trapped under his majestic and very expensive SUV. Oh, and he's being eaten by a bear.

The story is basically a stream of consciousness from the mind of Marv as he is eaten by a bear, consumes massive quantities of drugs and painkillers washed down with beer, suffers from withdrawals from his material world of success, imagines and reimagines his life as it has happened, and very slowly starts to slide into plain insanity. He describes his circumstances in a wonderfully outraged self-absorbed tone, and you slowly begin to learn that what Marv has convinced himself of is not necessarily what really happened, but it's done in a convincing way. The entire section where he is obsessing over his feet is priceless.

The book works as a very broad satire - Marv's voice is very original and very funny and resounds with the echoes of every scumbag executive you've ever seen or read about - but given how funny and creative the majority of the book was, I was disappointed in how it ended. It did fit the tone of the book, but it seemed a little rushed.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and I have already lent the book out to a friend. It's on my recommended reading list.

Let me start by saying this is not a bad book. It is short which makes it easy to go through in a single sitting, it has a distinct sense of humor (presented by our victim and narcissist main character Mr. Pushkin) that borders at times on more than just simply disturbing, and it contains a distinct voice. When so many books leave the reader wondering how the main character thinks and feels about a situation because the author uses the setting for most of the storytelling we are never without the optimistic, slightly inebriated, and caustic opinions of the bastard under the car being eaten by a bear.

I enjoyed reading this book, I found it a very funny and very honest portrayal of what someone of Mr. Pushkin's particular character flaws would do in such a situation. Presented as a man who believes that his image (and not Image Team) is everything, we aren't disappointed when his thoughts turn to suing the car company and drift to the lazy people who didn't detail the underside of his very expensive car. The language of the book radiates with the character and not an outside voice (the author) which makes it all the more unique.

That all having been said, there are several glaring errors in the books grammar (including the spelling) that should have been caught before publishing. Within the first pages they jump out at you and can disrupt the flow of the book. In the beginning I was willing to overlook these as possible quirks of the character but it became obvious by a quarter through that this was not intentional. It actually reminded me of when someone just runs through their spellcheck program and never looks at the suggestions to see if they make any sense. That was very disappointing and the only thing that kept me from giving this book five stars.

Ultimately my litmus test is whether I will read the book again (I will gladly) and if I will suggest it to friends (I already have). I am looking forward to sampling some Mr. Hansen's other works.