Who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark taking place in water deep enough for the shark to maneuver but shallow enough for the bear to maintain its dexterity? If you've read any reviews, than you should already know that this is the main theme of Bear V. Shark.

This book is a satire...it doesn't take place in the future or past, but instead in a setting that's...well...kind of like "reality" but not really. Everyone drives SUVs, televisions have no off buttons, and there's no need for the remote control in a world where you have ESP TV!

I really enjoyed this book. Bachelder seems to carry a theme throughout Bear V. Shark where his characters exist in a world where they are unable to separate themselves from their roles of consumers in a society obsessed by unanswerable hypothetical questions (ie bear v. shark). People speak in slogans, scientists/authors/newsproviders provide soundbytes but refuse to give real evidence, and the (by now) familiar ideas of Ocham's Razor and the Gordian Knot are key.

If you're looking for a "lighter read" with satire, then I'd recommend Bear V. Shark. If you're done with it and want something more "substantial," you'd likely enjoy Philip Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"...

First time novelist Chris Bachelder scores big with his debut novel, and has produced the kind of post-modern satire that the over-praised and under-edited Jonathan Franzen strains for in his "Corrections" leviathan.

In the future, the televisions have no off switch, nor do they have remote controls, because technology has gotten to the point that television no longer influences the culture, but IS the culture. Reality and simulation melt together seamlessly, without a trace of resistence from the archtypal family whose path we follow as they prepare themselves for a Las Vegas vacation to witness the much hyped Media Event of Bear v. Shark. Bachelder keeps a straight face through out most of this short but punchy novel, and displays an ear for the way television cant infiltrates our daily speech, and invades our dream life. Scattered through out the book are a heap of fast and savage rips on Mass Mediated news, sports call-in shows, flouncy entertainment underwhich nothing substantial resides.

In this world, experts in the guise of pundits, jocks, philosophers, and academics all feed a
an uncountably intrusive technology that renders every distraction and disturbance into an entertainment value, to be used until a new contrived sequence of illusion can be set in place.

Bachelder, demonstrating a brevity and incisive wit that trashes the claims made for the word-gorged "genius" of D.F. Wallace, writes surely, sharply, with his eye never off his target.

Though he does, at times, resort to the sort of post-modernism stylistics and cliches, such as having the author step out from the story to deliver some self-aware discourse on the limits of narrative's capacity to represent the external world fully, completely -- he has a novel or two to go before the lit.critese is pounded out of him -- our author finally reveals a humane side underneath the smart language, and issues forth a funny yet serious warning about our habit of relinquishing our thinking and our capacity to live imagitively over to the hands of data-drunk programmers.

A terrific first effort.

Bear v. Shark is one of the most clever books I have read in the last decade, combining wit with a complex satire of American consumer culture. The novel is mostly excellent, taking us on a road trip with an average American family, the Normans, on their way to see Bear v. Shark II, the biggest cultural event ever. Intertwined in the main story are small commercial-like segments that mostly elaborate on the Bear v. Shark question. The book is fast paced, and a quick read for a book that is 256 pages.

However, it is by no means perfect. Bear v. Shark slows to a grind in Part 2, written entirely as an interview between the author and a futuristic talk show personality (it works better than it should, but good writing can't help the gimmicky style used). Things pick up in part III though, bringing the book right to its violent, apocolyptic end.

I finished the book in two sittings, making it an ideal light read for those looking for something more challenging than the latest Clancy/Grisham novel. Chris Bachelder is a talented young author, and maybe next time around he can improve upon the winning formula.