Rating: 
Summary: early John Irving material confuses, bores...
Review: 'Setting Free the Bears' is an early work by John Irving that would have been normally out of print, and deservedly so, if it were not for his later fame from 'The World According to Garp'. In some ways the book is similar to 'The New Hotel Hampshire', a book I actually didn't care for, but lacks the humor or the huggable characters (or the curious incest sub-plot, thank goodness). So what exactly is wrong with 'Setting Free the Bears'?Well the plot itself is rather strange and somewhat incomprehensible. A young Austrian college student bumps into a very quirky fellow, and together the tour Austria on motorcycle. Just when you think the book will turn into a funny road story with an Austrian twist the author decides to split the story in two, with the a narrative of the main character camped out at a zoo and his strange friend narrating his (pre-war) family history. Very disappointing, and very dull. The ending concludes in comical fashion back at the zoo. But this fun ending is too little, too late. Bottom line: a very amateurish effort by the often outstanding John Irving. A definite miss.
Rating:
Summary: early John Irving material confuses, bores...
Review: 'Setting Free the Bears' is an early work by John Irving that would have been normally out of print, and deservedly so, if it were not for his later fame from 'The World According to Garp'. In some ways the book is similar to 'The New Hotel Hampshire', a book I actually didn't care for, but lacks the humor or the huggable characters (or the curious incest sub-plot, thank goodness). So what exactly is wrong with 'Setting Free the Bears'? Well the plot itself is rather strange and somewhat incomprehensible. A young Austrian college student bumps into a very quirky fellow, and together the tour Austria on motorcycle. Just when you think the book will turn into a funny road story with an Austrian twist the author decides to split the story in two, with the a narrative of the main character camped out at a zoo and his strange friend narrating his (pre-war) family history. Very disappointing, and very dull. The ending concludes in comical fashion back at the zoo. But this fun ending is too little, too late. Bottom line: a very amateurish effort by the often outstanding John Irving. A definite miss.
Rating:
Summary: Slightly disappointing
Review: After reading the wonderfully Irving's imaginative, captivating and sometimes zany books, The World According to Garp, A prayer for Owen Meany, The Cider House Rules, Hotel New Hampshire and Widow for One Year, Setting Free the Bears was a let down. The characters were extremely annoying and hard to stomach. After reading about Siggy for 150 pages I was ready to put the book down. I don't know much about motorcycles, and dodn't care to learn. I'll admit, maybe Setting Free the Bears just wasn't a book for me. Whatever you do, don't let reading this bland novel turn you off to John Irving's other novels. Most of them are supurb.
Rating: 
Summary: ragged and wonderful
Review: Having met John in Iowa City before Garp was published, BEARS was all I knew of his work. I just re-read it. Despite some lack of polish, it still moves me the most. Could be I love motobikes, could be I know Austria, but mostly it captures the ridiculous intensity and bittersweet nature of relationships at that age.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Judge it Too Harshly
Review: If this were written later in Irving's career I'd rate it lower, but it's his first book, so you got to cut him some slack. The so-called plot of the story involves letting animals out of the zoo in Vienna, a harebrained scheme if there ever was one. The zoo bust is a bust, and I couldn't decide if I should laugh or just be sickened by the results. Almost half the book is given to Siggy's "autobiography" detailing the lives of his parents and how he came to be during the years leading up to and after WWII. Siggy is a little disillusioned about his generation not having a war to fight, so "rescuing" the zoo animals is similar to the antics of his father and his mother's first boyfriend, Zahn (who may or may not have tried to set free the zoo animals at the end of the war). Siggy's results (through Graff) are similar. The problem with the autobiography and zoo watches is that you spend so much time slogging through them that you get taken out of the rest of the story. Which could be a good thing, because none of the characters come off to be all that sympathetic (which I say for every Irving book I've read to date) and I never did understand why Gallen stayed with Graff as long as she did. A somewhat enjoyable read, but I think it's best function is to compare Irving's earliest work with his later ones. I think he improved in coming up with better stories, but I've always had a hard time liking any of his characters. If you do purchase this book and have read his later works, just try to keep in mind that this is the first so you won't judge it too unfairly.
Rating:
Summary: Pre-History
Review: In all honesty, it's been years since I last read Setting Free The Bears, but I can still find the paragraphs that resonate: "Some people are proud and some have their doubts. And I can look at how left out of these times I feel - how I rely on pre-history for any sense and influence - and I can simplify this aforementioned garble. I can say: all anyone has is their pre-history. Feeling that you live at an interim time is something in the nature of being born and all the things that never happen to you after birth." If these words strike a chord with you, this is a book you should read. It is closer to "The Cider House Rules" or "A Prayer For Owen Meany" in character but is more cohesive; it is fantastic but wisely stops short of the extremes of "The World According to Garp" or "The Hotel New Hampshire". It is a novel full of ghosts, of surreal acknowledgement of the things that *do* happen to us after birth, even as we fail to recognize their importance.
Rating:
Summary: Good Read
Review: John Irving (once again) shows us his love of detail - his novels must be read slowly, and appreciatively. His "back-and-forth" in this novel truly illustrates his unique talent as THE American author of the late 20th century. I have read and re-read this novel NUMEROUS times, and believe it is his best snce "Garp". I Love it!!! One reading of ANY John Irving is not enough.
Rating:
Summary: Solace in a Bespectacled Bear's Roar
Review: Nazis and ill-tempered Asiatic bears, Communists and geleda baboons systematically intersect in John Irving's deliberately schizophrenic debut novel, Setting Free The Bears. Set in 1960s Vienna, some 20 years after the war, where the narrator, a college student Hannes Graff first meets the cryptic Siegfried "Siggy" Javotnik. Graff had often observed this strange fellow sitting by himself in the park, eating radishes and shaking his saltshakers. They, armed with no plans, decide to take a trip across Europe leading to wherever, arriving whenever. In those first 100 pages Irving is at his most irritating, his bland narrator joylessly and endlessly describing the countryside while absorbing the ramblings of the bizarre and obviously more interesting Siggy. Siggy is one of those passive aggressive intellectuals present in most of Irving's novels (see Freud in The Hotel New Hampshire, Owen Meany in A Prayer For Owen Meany). He often talks to the animals, of the animals, as he plans their emancipation from the Vienna zoo. But unlike some Irving's other intellectuals, who often serve as reflective surfaces for the boring protagonists, Siggy is given a voice, a character and a motive. The novel's masterful midsection is The Highly Selective Biography of Siefried Javotnik, where he hilariously recounts what "could" be the history of his family in WW2, what they "probably" did and what the Nazis, Russians, Chetnick ressitance fighters, Communists and their Partisans actually did. His history, the way he sees it, explains his insane plan to let the animals run free. And what Setting Free The Bears is about is this young mans quest to "to have a thing going for yourself that isn't somehow the apprenticeship to something that's gone before; and not yours and never will be." Born in a land where the lines have been drawn, the enemies pointed out and rules set, they want to define their own morality. They want an atrocity to stop. A cause to fight for. The animals of Vienna Zoo are that cause. In the broadest sense, Setting Free The Bears is about the search for something to believe in. What they discover is that their grand metaphor for independence doesn't quite fit. Life can not be navigated at right angles, and square jawed logic doesn't cut it. For the zoo bust to be a goal in of its-self, the perpetrators must ignore the consequences. They must not consider the danger of letting predators run among their prey, or what the scavenging humans will do to those free animals. They must dig up injustices, real or imagined, that would justify their crusade. Perhaps a cruel night guard named O. Schrutt, who puts naturally antagonistic animals in a five foot cage for his own sadistic pleasure, would provide them with sufficient righteous indignation for their quest. What are they supposed to do, sit back and let the poor Antelope fight the Indo-Chinese Cat? They have to do something. One thing they must not do is plan. Never plan. Unfortunately, the figures don't always make a certain sum. And there is a beautiful passage in the book where Graff waits solemnly to hear that Bear's roar. If the now free bear roars, then the bust was a success and both he and his faraway friend can take comfort in the obedience of real life to their ill-defined pipe dreams. What Irving grants the kid, as a measure of empathy, is a vision that may or may not be a dream. Setting Free The Bears contains the seeds of a masterwork, but is too riled with Irving's detachment to achieve that status. He often resembles a ninety-year-old man, eloquently and slowly describing fantastic events. His "I'm too wise to be moved by this, but I'll laugh at it" writing style drove me up the wall with The Hotel New Hampshire. But his debut is better then that, it has a sense of joy and poignancy that escapes its elaborate metaphoric pretense. Almost despite its author.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely disjointed
Review: The bears of the title are in the Heitzinger Zoo in Vienna, which is why I read this first novel of Irving's. Giving a choice of his novels to begin with, I probably would have selected The World According to Garp or A Prayer for Owen Meany. But in preparation for our trip to Austria, this novel popped up as having a tenuous tie, and due to the fact that we were not finding much to go on, tenuous was better than nothing. If you take the middle section, called ''The Notebook," and remove the bits about the zoo, what you are left with is the prehistory it the Siggy character, a biographical compilation of one family from right before World War II up to the time that the Soviets withdrew from Austria. In this section you get a highly detailed and personal account of what was taking place from the point-of-view of the street. I found it strangely similar to Morton's A Nervous Splendour--a feeling of history contained in a microcosm. While fictionalized, Irving gives a clue as to his research on page 222 where in the fictional diarist lists some books of "influence." The other parts of the story were less successful, at least for me. This could have been because I was looking to learn about Austria and Vienna, and took less enjoyment from the crazed antics of Siggy and Graff. Although many scenes were vivid--the climactic meeting of motorcycle and beehives, the brutality of the milkman to his horse--the overall plot was extremely disjointed. While I am likely to read another Irving novel, due to his reputation, this novel has soured me on the idea for the moment.
Rating: 
Summary: The rest of you are lying; you couldn't finish it.
Review: There's no John Irving novel I don't love, except this one. Most of them, I have re-read about five times. Even "The Water-Method Man", one of his weaker novels, I read twice. I couldn't finish this one, not in THREE separate attempts, at three very different times in my life, three different frames of mind. There's nothing wrong with my reading skills. I'm forced to conclude the rest of you are lying. Siggy and Hannes are simply not characters one can care about, and the actual writing is wretched.
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