Magic Realism

Memoirs of a Polar Bear is infused with the narrative and thematic spirit of magic realism, a style of writing in which non-realistic elements exist and manifest within a realistic set of narrative circumstances – the fantastical co-existing with the natural. Unlike the fantasy genre, in magic realism, so-called “magical elements,” such as the anthro-pomorphic (humanized) bears here are accepted as part of the so-called “real world” - the reader's world.

The reason that a stylistic element like magic realism is also a thematic element has to do with the fact that for the characters in the book, being a talking, human-like polar bear in a human world is a fundamental part of what the book is trying to say about human-animal interactions. In this circumstance, story and style are functions of one another, each affecting important points the novel is making about the other. There...