The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Written by Thornton Wilder

Narrated by B. J. Harrison

Five people fall to their deaths when a bridge collapses over a river in Peru. Can Brother Juniper discover the reason that these five individuals had to die?  

Exploring themes of love, goodness, and predestination, Wilder exposes the nature of his characters by examining their relationships. The bonds of parents and children, siblings, and surrogate parents are all examined with elegant skill, leading us to ask the hard questions that point to the inevitable river below.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1928.

• Language: English
• Publisher: B.J. Harrison
• Release date: Jan 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781957934303

Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) was an accomplished novelist and playwright whose works, exploring the connection between the commonplace and cosmic dimensions of human experience, continue to be read and produced around the world. His Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of seven novels, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928, as did two of his four full-length dramas, Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1943). Wilder's The Matchmaker was adapted as the musical Hello, Dolly!. He also enjoyed enormous success with many other forms of the written and spoken word, among them teaching, acting, the opera, and films. (His screenplay for Hitchcock's Shadow of Doubt [1943] remains a classic psycho-thriller to this day.) Wilder's many honors include the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Book Committee's Medal for Literature.

Reviews for The Bridge of San Luis Rey

[boredgames · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

strangely moving. a masterclass in characterisation, summary, and an interesting structure that breeds pathos and bittersweet irony

[wvlibrarydude · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful short novel of love and its many facets. This isn't a story of romantic love, but of the different kinds of love that family and friends share. Love of the heart for people that encompasses the good and bad.

[debnance_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Five people are killed when a small bridge breaks in Peru. A priest investigates the lives of the five people to try to understand why these five were killed.

[jbarringer-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book. It is a set of short stories linked together by a framing narrative- a bridge collapses and several people are killed, and each story tells the story of one of the people who died in that event. The writing is lovely, and some of the imagery is hauntingly memorable.

[cestovatela · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The ending of this book is so resonant.

[sistersticks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This novel tells the story of 5 people killed when the famous bridge collapses. Each story explores human complexity, strenth and frailty. Each story demonstrates the waste of accidental and random death. After reading writing of this calibre I can't go back to modern light fiction. I tried, I just cant. Put down that pulp. Pick up a classic. (Read May 2008)

[nsenger-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

“Why did this happen to those five?” If there were any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in a human life, surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off. Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.I've had The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder on my to-read list for probably twenty years. I had vaguely heard of it growing up, but it really crossed my radar when the local Catholic high school suggested it as a book to teach in junior high. I considered it whenever it came time to evaluate the novels I taught in eighth grade, but it somehow never grabbed me enough to read it, much less teach it. That's one of the main reasons I put it on my Classics Challenge list: to see if it's a good novel to teach to eighth graders.The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1928, and was selected for Time's All-time 100 Novels List and the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels (The Board's List).Here's a summary of the plot from Wikipedia:It tells the story of several interrelated people who die in the collapse of an Inca rope bridge in Peru, and the events that lead up to their being on the bridge. A friar who has witnessed the accident then goes about inquiring into the lives of the victims, seeking some sort of cosmic answer to the question of why each had to die.The novel presents several deep and important questions, but does not answer them. Nor is it meant to. In a letter included in the The Harper Perennial Kindle edition, Wilder answers a student who had written to ask about his position on the book's questions:Dear John:The book is not supposed to solve. A vague comfort is supposed to hover above the unanswered questions, but it is not a theorem with its Q.E.D. The book is supposed to be as puzzling and distressing as the news that five of your friends died in an automobile accident. I dare not claim that all sudden deaths are, in the last counting, triumphant. As you say, a little over half the situations seem to prove something and the rest escape, or even contradict. Chekhov said: "The business of literature is not to answer questions, but to state them fairly."If Chekhov is right, then Wilder does good business in The Bridge of San Luis Rey. It is as puzzling and distressing as Wilder intended, and it does not offer trite or shallow answers to deep questions.As to my question about whether it would be good to teach in junior high, I can only answer that it would not be a book that I would choose. It certainly has many of the qualities a piece of literature ought to have to make a good classroom novel: well-drawn characters, thought-provoking subject matter, depth of meaning, and so on. It deserves to be on a list of books to be taught in junior high. However, it didn't move me the way a book needs to in order to be passionate about teaching it.

[fuzzy_patters · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really liked this book. I waffled for a few minutes about whether it deserves 4 or 5 stars, and I finally settled on 5 stars. The only reason why I hesitated was that some of the characters had some inconsistencies that were jarring at times, but I think that was intentional on the authors part. The essence of the book was the complexities of man that makes it difficult to judge their worth and salvation, and these sudden inconsistencies portray this complexity.For those unfamiliar with the book, Wilder has invented a character, Brother Juniper, who wants to prove the existence of God scientifically. His method is to study the lives of five characters who plunged to their deaths when the Bridge of San Luis Rey (fictional) collapsed in Lima, Peru in the late eighteenth century. He hopes that through studying these five characters, he will be able to ascertain why their lives were suddenly ended by God, whether it be due to punishment for their sins or salvation due to their piety.What follows is a brilliant study of the complexities of man and what makes us who we are as well as the difficulties of determining the existence of God and, if he exists, his nature. Wilder does a wonderful job of presenting the important questions about the meaning of our existence and the worth of individual lives without ever answering his questions. The end result is that book stays with the reader for hours after reading it as you try an unravel some of these philosophical questions on your own. I found it to be a thought-provoking book for the modern reader, just as I'm sure it was when it was first published in the 1920s, and I highly recommend it.

[julsitos2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Simple yet divine.

[ghr4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

”On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.” So begins Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey, a timeless parable, properly lauded as one of the great novels in American literature. Brother Juniper, a monk who happens to witness the tragedy, seeks to prove that some divine intervention rather than chance led to the deaths of those particular five victims. Wilder’s seemingly simple narrative belies the deep underlying complexities of emotions that weave through the story: love and respect, fear and jealousy, pain and insecurity; and the nuances that give deeper insight into the human condition. As I can attest, it is not uncommon to completely miss the message and the meaning after an initial reading of the book. This is a rich, powerful, and profound novel whose beauty, clarity, and poignancy comes ever clearer with successive readings.

[absurdeist · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Thornton Wilder successfully fictionalized some ages-old core questions that have haunted humanity since its inception in his short novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Why do bad things happen? Why do bad things happen to good people? Is there a plan or purpose behind the bad happenings? A reason? Are bad happenings such as the one depicted in the novel -- the collapse of a bridge, a "ladder of thin slats swung out over a gorge, with handrails of dried vine" -- or other bad happenings such as natural disasters or war, "acts of God" or acts of fate? Are bad happenings meaningful or meaningless? If the events in Wilder's novel are not "acts of God" does that then mean that the deaths served no purpose and the victim's lives had no meaning, or could the disaster, in it's aftermath, somehow, be it by God or by other mysterious forces, be used for good in the lives of those left grieving, behind? Complicated, convoluted questions, this slim, but intense, beautifully written novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, raises.Wilder, of course, doesn't explicitly answer these universal questions, though by novel's end, our narrator, Brother Juniper, eyewitness to the bridges collapse: "He saw the bridge divide and fling five gesticulating ants into the valley below..." certainly has answered some of them. Though in some socks-you-in-the-gut, harsh irony, Brother Juniper, after he's dared ask why -- why did these people die?, why did the bridge collapse for them instead of others? -- and then travelled by foot great distances to probe the lives and personal histories of those who fell for possible clues to answer the deeper questions of why that are only natural for an inquisitive mind's pursuit, ultimately becomes the sixth and final victim of San Luis Rey's collapse. Brother Juniper lacked the foresight in seeing how dangerous his questions were in a culture whose pious insularity accepted nothing less than rote avowals of faith in God's sovereign will. Moreover, Brother Juniper was stealing time from his ascetic commitments to solitude and prayer in order to play detective. In the least he was egregiously undisciplined; at worst, a heretic. But his fellow monks got it wrong. Because Brother Juniper sought in his investigations not to disprove his Catholic faith or the sovereignty of God, but to affirm his faith in God. Not surprisingly, Brother Juniper's rational, rather than preprogrammed-faith approach, in attempting to determine why those five perished when and where and how they perished, was condemned as insubordination and blasphemy, an unforgivable rejection of God's goodness and sovereignty. How dare a middling monk not take God automatically on faith! For the sin of suggesting God's will could be accessed through an investigation -- through empiricism -- Brother Juniper, a devout and faithful Catholic, became a martyr for science.If there are any answers in this brutal universe that can explain how Evil and Human Suffering can comfortably coexist alongside a purported All-Good and Omnipotent God, a deity to be trusted and praised by its adherents even when disasters on a scale more monstrous than the collapse of a flimsy bridge in Peru occur ... say the collapse of the Twin Towers or the unending collapse that is Genocide ... then it's clear to me that Brother Juniper was successful in his quest.

[br77rino · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Three intermingled stories of various Peruvians living in Lima during the Spanish colonial era, and dying by an act of God while crossing the famous Incan bridge. The story as a whole is an exercise in answering the question "Why? Why them?" Thornton Wilder's answer was simple, and well-loved (he got the Pulitzer, the book was a smash and unprecedented success and the proceeds from this one short book, written in his twenties, set him up for the rest of his life).By the way, the Foreword by Russell Banks is bad and I would advise avoiding it, but the Afterword by the author's granddaughter is very good, going into his letters, interviews and original drafts.

[steve02476 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Weird. Some cool writing, kind of reminded me of the text to some Edward Gorey books (but not as silly or macabre). But I totally didn't get the point of the book. I'm going to have to look it up and have someone explain it to me.

[withawhy99 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When I moved to New Hampshire a year ago, I found out that I was entering the land of Our Town. Thornton Wilder's classic play was written in and based on the town of Peterborough, NH, 15 minutes away from my new home. My memories of the play are vague, mostly based on seeing that TV version with Paul Newman in high school, but Wilder also wrote one of my favorite works of fiction, Theophilus North. I determined to read all of six of his other novels to see what else might be gleaned from them.Well, they certainly are a diverse bunch. Some are set abroad, in modern and ancient Rome (The Cabala and The Ides of March) and ancient Greece (The Woman of Andros). Others explore explicitly American themes, with one about a peripatetic salesman/preacher (Heaven's My Destination), and another concerning a multigenerational mining family saga - slash - murder mystery (The Eighth Day). All are definitely worth reading, and reveal what The Paris Review once called "one of the toughest and most complicated minds in contemporary America."The one that touched me most, though, and immediately became another of my favorite books, was his very early The Bridge of San Luis Rey. I'm not alone--when it was first published, it was a huge bestseller and remains extremely popular. Wilder's writing in this book is simply brilliant and should be studied by all aspiring writers of fiction. He has the ability to artfully turn a poetic phrase in a way that is always lucid and conversational, never pretentious or contrived. In a brief narrative (not much more than 100 pages), he manages to bring to life a whole world of distinctive characters, from aristocrats to peasants. He sets his story in 18th century Peru, but his people, while convincingly of their place and time, are also universal in their struggles with the great questions of life, death, love, and fate.The Limited Editions Club and its mass-market arm, the Heritage Press, put out a lovely edition that brings the perfect marriage of form and content to Wilder's words. I have the less-expensive Heritage Press version, which can easily be had for under $10. I find it a spectacular example of bookmaking for that price. The two-color binding, stamped in black and real gold leaf, is a striking and beautifully simple evocation of the characters' journey to the fatal bridge. I love the font choices (Albertus and Plantin), which like Wilder's writing are classic, eminently readable, and distinctive, and the typography is impeccable. The accompanying lithographs by Remy Charlot have a sculptural simplicity that also perfectly complements the text.So, what are you waiting for? Go find this book and start reading! I hope you'll love it as much as I do.Originally posted on The Emerald City Book Reviewemeraldcitybookreview.blogspot.com

[littleboris · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Didn't know what to expect of this book - quite a good reflection on why people die when they do

[patrickgarson_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is an interesting novella. It's underscored by a quiet kind of urgency, if that makes sense. Wilder's opening question pulses through each chapter, and yet the conclusion brings no change. The urgency - never mind the question - is wholly unresolved and unlessened. I'm usually a fan of novels that contain more off the page than on, negativist kind of books like this, but I couldn't help wanting more. Wilder gave me a a few frames, but I wanted the rest of the reel.A bridge outside of Peru collapses, killing five people, and brother Juniper is determined to investigate the five, seemingly random, deaths. He is convinced that the lives of these five will reveal the hand of God; the role of providence in their fates.Does it? Well, that's a question Wilder leaves very much to the reader. His mellifluous, allusive prose certainly contains enough for a dozen postulations, each as valid as the last. This makes the novella somewhat of a Gordian knot; essentially unsolveable. There are other compensations, however. In a hundred pages, Wilder summons up a wonderful cast of characters. Each of the victims is built up swiftly, passionately, and efficiently. The characterisation ranges from children to old people, and it is comprehensive and solidly believable. Wilder's empathy with - and accuracy in portraying - such a varied cast is really exemplary.Even beyond its five victims, The Bridge of San Luis Rey is peppered with intriguing people. A few meagre paragraphs is enough to conjure forth someone deserving of their own novel: The grief-stricken captain; the virtuous but corpulent priest; the urbane and rebellious daughter. Married to Wilder's asynchronous prose - an-almost Romantic, heady and unmitigated style, yet not flowery for it - the novella is certainly an easy read. The supplementary materials included in this edition also provide much insight into his thoughts in writing it (though, I implore you to avoid the "foreword" unless you want the entire book outlined to you in five pages. I have no idea why anybody thought that was a good idea to include at start of the book).Ultimately, because of the strengths of Wilder's writing, I found it impossible _not_ to think on this story, turning it over and around like a Rubik's Cube. And yet, the longer I did this, the more frustrated I became. The Bridge of San Luis Rey is not intended to be solved; it simply is. This zen-like quality may sit very well with some - and it's certainly thoughtful and worthy of thought. But for those of us used to a more conventional narrative it may frustrate somewhat. Nonetheless, an interesting novella and worth the attention it takes to get through the hundred-odd pages.

[carterchristian1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I saw the movie as a child, then as a young adult read the book. The theme of individuals with no ties to each other suddenly coming together at the end of life (how many bridges fall around the world, over time) has an irrestible appeal. The South American setting for me at this early age added another dimension. It is also a fairly short book. About time for a movie remake I would say to see the book's popularity go up.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The premise for The Bridge of San Luis Rey is fascinating. In a nutshell an Italian monk by the name of Brother Juniper was not only witness to a terrible tragedy, he was mere moments away from sharing the same horrific fate. An ancient bridge in Lima, Peru collapses just as five travelers have set out across it. Instead of suffering a kind of survivors guilt, Brother Juniper is instead encouraged to pursue his study of theology, using the tragedy to demonstrate scientific reason as to why his life was spared. Being a man of the cloth he wants to prove it was divine intervention that caused him to avoid such an unfortunate demise. More importantly, he can finally prove the five victims who weren't so lucky shared a common fault and their deaths were part of a larger plan. The other option, less likely in the eyes of Brother Juniper, was it was a simple, random accident. Brother Juniper devotes his life to researching the private lives and documenting the secrets of the five victims, in a search for commonality. All in the hopes of proving the collapse was considered an act of god, a shared destiny. This would be something Brother Juniper could finally attach his scientific study of theology to.

[jwood652 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In 1714 an ancient bridge in Peru collapses killing five people. This book gives insight into each of their lives and a monk's attempt to determine why they died. It is an exploration of concepts such as God, fate or happenstance. In the end we realize that the main force that connects us mere mortals to each other is love. I give this Pulitzer Prize winning novel just 4 stars because I had difficulty following the language and logic.

[jmcdbooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rating: A+Perhaps on of the best novels I've ever read. Brilliantly told. Wonderful character development. Many anticipated, but unexpected turns. Story will stay with me a long while.

[kant1066 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel, perhaps more than any other in the history of American literature, asks "Can bad things really happen to good people?" On one day in 1714, the Bridge of San Luis Rey collapses, sending five people falling to their deaths. Brother Juniper, one of the witnesses to the tragedy, seeks to explain how and why this could have happened. The bulk of the novel, a concerted effort on the part of Juniper to justify the ways of God to man, is a carefully woven portrait of their interconnecting and overlapping lives, loves, successes and failures leading up to the day of the bridge collapsing.The Marquesa de Montemayor, whose daughter treats her with supreme indifference, has just seen her move away to marry her husband, a Spanish Viceroy. She copes mainly by writing beautiful, elaborate letters to her daughter and son-in-law. The Marquesa becomes reclusive and introspective, and asks the local Abbess and proprietress of an orphanage for the company of one of her girls. Pepita comes to live with her and provide much-needed companionship. On learning that her daughter is pregnant, the Marquesa makes a visit to the shrine at Santa Maria de Cluxambuqua. On her return to Lima, accompanied by Pepita, we learn that they are killed on the bridge. We later learn through Brother Juniper that the letters she wrote are gems of the Spanish language and are canonized and anthologized for schoolchildren to learn ages and ages hence.Another story revolves around two twins named Manuel and Esteban (Wilder himself was a twin whose brother died in childbirth) who, also under the protection of the same local Abbess, grow up to become scribes. Soon Manuel is taken in to compose letters for the extraordinarily talented stage talent who goes by only "the Perichole," who is in romantic cahoots with both the Spanish Viceroy and a local bullfighter (see Offenbach's eponymous opera, as well as the short story by Prosper Merimee). After Manuel dies of an infection, Esteban is enlisted to assist one Captain Alvarado on a long voyage, partially in order to pay for a present for the Abbess. On the way to buy the present, Esteban crosses the Bridge of San Luis Rey and his fate befalls him.Uncle Pio, the Perichole's assistant, maid, and general counselor, has an interesting life of his own. Growing up as a diplomat, theater impresario, and Catholic shill during the Inquisition, he finds Micaela Villegas (see the historical personage of the same name, whom Wilder has only slightly fictionalized here), whom he trains and refashions in his own image, turning her into the best-known Peruvian actress of her time. After having become thoroughly disillusioned with the theatre and her success, she wishes to enter into proper society and wishes to never talk to Uncle Pio again. After some hesitation, the Perichole allows Pio to take her son and give the curious boy the proper education that he deserves. Leaving the next morning, they are the last two victims of the bridge.Looking for one common thread to tie all of these disparate lives together, the reader is drawn over and over again to fact that they all see confounded by their personal searches for love and meaning. As much money or success they attain, we see lives beguiled by angst and beset by circumstance. By no means, and Brother Juniper would certainly have noted this in his book, do we find people who "deserved" to die.But the Bridge of San Luis Rey has a sixth victim, one who didn't fall hundreds of feet into the ravine below: Brother Juniper himself. Having written his book full of the most diligent and ingenuous research in an attempt to find out why God would let this happen (was it punishment for evil? Or was God just indifferent to human suffering?), the Catholic Church finds his book heresy and they burn him for it. What was so heretical? Perhaps that he would be so presumptuous as to explain God's plan for the world.As far as the form and structure of the novel are concerned, the first and last chapters, the only places where Wilder allows himself philosophical divulgence, are a little too cordoned-off for my taste, rendering the deeply resounding questions of theology and meaning merely peripheral. I feel that interlarding them into the lives of the five characters would probably have better achieved what was most likely one of his goals in the first place - to meditate on questions of fate, free will, chance, and mortality. Finally, while to pen, at the age of thirty, a novel this succinct and full of impact is an accomplishment in itself, I feel that tripling or even quadrupling the size of the book would have made the characters more realistic. But if that were the case, of course, it would not have the wonderful quality of being told to you as a griot would tell it, as the scintillating moral fable it is.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"The Bridge of San Luis Rey" is a perfect little book, and also a perfect, little book. No wonder it's been read and reread for so long, and filmed so many times. Actually, I saw the film first, the one with Gabriel Byrne and Harvey Keitel, and now that I can compare the two, I can say that the film is one of the finest adaptations of anything in a long, long time.The story, such as it is, concerns the study by a man of the cloth of the tragedy of the fall of the eponymous bridge. He asks, could this have been God's plan?, and he spends years interviewing subjects to find out all about those who perished. It's a terribly sad story, full of meaning and truths half-forgotten, and written with such panache that it's hard to give this anything but full marks.

[mrs_mcgreevy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An ancient bridge in Lima, Peru collapses, killing 5 people. Brother Juniper, a Franciscan, investigates their lives to try to find out why God took those five people. Although a Divine reason is never found, love, in all of its forms is the bridge connecting both those 5 people and all others. The character portraits are absolutely stunning.

[thewasp_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The bridge of San louis Rey collapses causing the deaths of five people. A fransician monk who escaped the accident delves into the lives of the victims.I read this book in fits and starts and did it a disservice. The writing was subtle and intuitive but I kept losing the thread of the story.Worth a reread - next time in a sitting.

[varwenea · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I simply love this little book. At page 40, my heart panged just so, when two of the five travelers had fallen into the gulf. How did Thornton Wilder captivate me in a mere 40 pages?? Apparently, it IS heart. (See quote.) This 1927 novel starts with: “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.” Brother Jupiter, who had witnessed this accident, proceeds to prove the divinity of this accident. In the three parts that follow, we learn the lives of the five travelers. All had lacked a certain loving element in their lives, and all were about to embark on a new journey in life when the accident happened. Those who are left behind, in part five, examine themselves and the role they had played. The perfected brevity, the richness in personalities, the delicately intertwined lives, and the elegant prose were all a joy to read. I hungrily underlined far too many gems. Learning that it was a Pulitzer Prize winner of 1928 makes sense. Like many of today’s Pulitzer winners, I sense a touch of defiance of the norm, which in this case was the church – unforgiving, literal, Inquisition, and male dominated. As a contrast and balance, the Abbess played a nurturing role, and she too feels suffocated. While reading this book, I felt vibes of “Cloud Atlas”, likely because of the intertwined characters. I was surprised to learn from Wiki that David Mitchell had in fact named Luisa Rey after this book including her fall from the bridge. Go figure. Some quotes:In honor of its charming brevity, I’m keeping this short too despite the many smiley’s I wrote on margins. On Literature – good writing needs heart!“…the Conde delighted in her letters, but he thought that when he had enjoyed the style he had extracted all their richness and intention, missing (as most readers do) the whole purport of literature, which is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.”On Infatuation:“It was not the first time that Manuel had been fascinated by a woman…, but it was the first time that his will and imagination had been thus overwhelmed. He had lost that privilege of simple nature, the dissociation of love and pleasure. Pleasure was no longer as simple as eating; it was being complicated by love. Now was the beginning that crazy loss of one’s self, that neglect of everything but one’s dramatic thoughts about the beloved…”On Love – I love this:“But soon we shall die and all memories of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

[bookson23rd · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A powerful book.

[kotwcs · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One would think that a story about several people who die falling from a rope bridge that snaps would be depressing. The story is about a gentle old friar who attempts to look into the peoples' lives to see if they were "innocent", or if the tragedy was indeed a judgment on them. The beautiful conclusion of this little book is that love is a bridge that never breaks...

[sammii507 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a fantastic book. I love books that pose big questions, and the question posed in this book is one of the biggest. Having lost friends to accidents and to suicide, it's a question that has gone through my mind repeatedly - why them? What does it mean? While Wilder does not exactly answer the question (he leaves it for the reader to decide), he poses it brilliantly and beautifully. This is a book that really gets you thinking, which is how all great books should be.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am certainly not the first, nor will I be the last, to recognize the brilliance of this novella. This is my first Thornton Wilder read.....how I could have made it this far in life without reading his work is beyond me. Somehow he manages to create vivid and memorable characters who share the experience of dying when a bridge collapses. From that event he proceeds to ask profound and essentially unanswerable questions, of the sort we all try to address or avoid throughout our life. Is there intention? Is there meaning? When is it the right time for as person to die? Is there such a thing or is it all happenstance? The introduction for this 75th anniversary edition of the novel by Russell Banks is excellent. He draws a parallel between the experience of those surviving the bridge collapse to those surviving the 9/11 attacks. The same eternal questions apply. Lovely, powerful prose makes this so very readable and timeless!

[anniik_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a fantastic book. I love books that pose big questions, and the question posed in this book is one of the biggest. Having lost friends to accidents and to suicide, it's a question that has gone through my mind repeatedly - why them? What does it mean? While Wilder does not exactly answer the question (he leaves it for the reader to decide), he poses it brilliantly and beautifully. This is a book that really gets you thinking, which is how all great books should be.