In the interesting and terrifying memoirs of this French anthropologist, the close escape from the bear’s jaw leads to the exploration of trauma and survival

In her second book, French anthropologist Nastassja Martin tries to tell us what happens when an unstoppable force encounters an immovable object. In August 2015, when she was living among the Even people in Kamchatka, Russia, she—an unshakable object: a wayward, aggressive woman— met an unstoppable big brown bear.

Her story is simple at first, beautiful, and creepy. She wrote: "The bear kissed my face, his teeth bit me, my jaw cracked, my skull cracked"-but, pierced by a well-placed ice axe, he changed his mind and left. , Leaving her with "features drowned in the open gully on my face, covered by internal organization". As a result, this short but chewy book thickens and becomes a stew of memoirs, drama, anthropology, and metaphysics—or how immovable objects move and change.

This change is literal in a sense: it is not just the physical legacy of the bear attack after Martin’s miraculous survival, but she feels that she is what the locals call medka, that is, "marked by the bear." It's half human and half bear. But the more we read, the more we can see that there is always something wild in Martin's spirit.

She was taken to the hospital; the next scene was sometimes interesting-the Russian authorities wanted to know if she was a "French (or worse, a well-trained agent sent by the United States)"-and sometimes scary: replacement The jaw plate causes antibiotic-resistant infections. She is not a model patient: she has not fully recovered yet, she returned to Kamchatka, to the source of her pain. She quoted Pascal Quignard: "It's not about getting us out of the past, but about getting out of its connection: this is a strange and regrettable task."

This time, she did not study others, but to understand herself, and Martin’s contradictions appeared repeatedly. She refused to adapt: ​​"I have never tried to bring peace to my life, let alone my encounters with others. ." After returning to the peninsula-her medka identity made her rejected by some people-she wanted to "stop thinking", but this was not her way. Therefore, we conducted a fascinating and ambitious exploration of animism—the boundary between humans and animals—and how she viewed her encounter with the bear as a sign of collapse. "I'm from the inside out."

This book represents both collapse and reconstruction. In Sophie R Lewis’s elegant translation, this language is often tempting ("The water is rising, the pier is submerged, and we must slat the anchors into the hatches; we have everything we need to face the sea; goodbye , We are going to sea"), although sometimes nervous about the effect of the epigram: "Life pushes us into the belly, but the bear will return to the underground to dream." However, Martin does not seek the sympathy of readers. She just wanted us to share what she tried to understand what happened to her. What else can we ask for from a book?

"In the Eye of the Wild" by Nastassja Martin, translated by Sophie R Lewis, published by New York Review Books (£11.99)