The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Wilder Thornton: A Book Review of Sorts

I'm on a roll.

I finished another book.

Indeed I'm going to make a new habit of going to the library every two weeks, and try to read a book a week. This week, after having read 'A Month in the Country' (see last blog post), I actually improved my volume of pages by quite a bit, up to twenty a session. Not bad for a broken brain. And so it was I trundled admirably through another classic, 'The Bridge of San Luis Rey' by Wilder Thornton. Now I'd always meant to read this when I was recuperating a few years back, but just never got round to it. There was always another book calling out to me. Not so now.

Published in 1927 and Pulitzer Prize winner in 1928, this is often considered to be Wilder Thornton's best work. In 1998 it was rated 37th by the Editorial Board of the American Modern Library out of the 100 best 20th century novels. Even more recently Time Magazine included it in their own list of the 100 Best English-Language Novels form 1923 to 2005. So...

Expectations were high,

And ultimately disappointed;

Sort of.

Was I really disappointed?

No.

Because I'd definitely recommend this as a read, though I'm not saying you'll enjoy it. You see - for me - this is one of those rare works that is both brilliant and poor at the same time. I shall endeavour to explain. Set in Peru, the story considers the lives of five main characters who become the victims of an Incan bridge collapse. Was it frayed rope and chance that took these lives or an act of God? And why were these lives taken? Did God have a reason? And so it is one Brother Juniper seeks to collect evidence and use this one terrible event and its victims as an experiment to better understand why God would allow such a thing to happen. All the makings of a good tale.

Sadly though, much of the writing - in my humble opinion - fails to properly engage. Perhaps this is because Thornton Wilder is considered a playwright and a novelist, and I found most of the story read a lot like a play. Characters were two-dimensional at best, and I failed to really connect with any of them on an emotional level. I barely cared that any of them died. Or lived. Similarly the dialogue was forced, with long monologues as one might expect in a play as opposed to the rise and fall of everyday speech that draws one in. I have to say for a substantial part of the book I was thinking it might just scrape a 3 star rating, being more a 2.5, but then the ending happened. And when I say the ending, I mean only the last twenty pages or thereabout.

It is these pages where the novel rounds off the tale, and it is for these pages alone that it is worth reading. From what becomes of Brother Juniper and his heresy, and to other characters who feature in the novel, we are left to ponder on a bridge being the love that connects the living to the dead. We live, even in death and beyond the confines of life and body, as long as some among the living love us; and only once love is forgotten does the bridge collapse and we are forgot. It's an interesting end, one that forces the reader to think deeply and properly ponder what the tale and life means. To be honest it finally read like a novel and was a four or five star ending.

Thus, overall, this book comes in for me as a 3.5 star read, though I would highly recommend it for the ending alone. To be honest I'm amazed it's rated so highly by influential bodies, but then so often are influential bodies influenced by peer pressure; at least in my experience. And so I come to the end of another book review of sorts. Into my little satchel the last two books go, and I will once again visit the library on a cold and wet Friday to pick up another two.

Until next time...

Much love.

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