The Bridge of San Luis Rey

By Thornton Wilder

In eighteenth-century Peru, a historic bridge connecting the cities of Cuzco and Lima collapses, plunging five people to their deaths. A Franciscan monk, Brother Juniper, witnesses the tragedy and embarks on a spiritual quest to reconcile free will versus fate and the existence of God in the victims’ lives: “Why did this happen to those five?” This thought-provoking, Pulitzer Prize–winning second novel by American writer Thornton Wilder was called “a masterpiece” by The New York Times when it was published in 1927. Critically acclaimed, it remains a compelling literary classic exploring destiny, love, religion, and the meaning of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Jan 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9780486851761

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 a 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.

Book preview

Part One

Perhaps an Accident

ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON

, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below. This bridge was on the highroad between Lima and Cuzco and hundreds of persons passed over it every day. It had been woven of osier by the Incas more than a century before and visitors to the city were always led out to see it. It was a mere ladder of thin slats swung out over the gorge, with handrails of dried vine. Horses and coaches and chairs had to go down hundreds of feet below and pass over the narrow torrent on rafts, but no one, not even the Viceroy, not even the Archbishop of Lima, had descended with the baggage rather than cross by the famous bridge of San Luis Rey. St. Louis of France himself protected it, by his name and by the little mud church on the further side. The bridge seemed to be among the things that last forever; it was unthinkable that it should break. The moment a Peruvian heard of the accident he signed himself and made a mental calculation as to how recently he had crossed by it and how soon he had intended crossing by it again. People wandered about in a trance-like state, muttering; they had the hallucination of seeing themselves falling into a gulf.

There was a great service in the Cathedral. The bodies of the victims were approximately collected and approximately separated from one another, and there was great searching of hearts in the beautiful city of Lima. Servant girls returned bracelets which they had stolen from their mistresses, and usurers harangued their wives angrily, in defense of usury. Yet it was rather strange that this event should have so impressed the Limeans, for in that country those catastrophes which lawyers shockingly call the acts of God were more than usually frequent. Tidal waves were continually washing away cities; earthquakes arrived every week and towers fell upon good men and women all the time. Diseases were forever flitting in and out of the provinces and old age carried away some of the most admirable citizens. That is why it was so surprising that the Peruvians should have been especially touched by the rent in the bridge of San Luis Rey.

Everyone was very deeply impressed, but only one person did anything about it, and that was Brother Juniper. By a series of coincidences so extraordinary that one almost suspects the presence of some Intention, this little red-haired Franciscan from Northern Italy happened to be in Peru converting the Indians and happened to witness the accident.

It was a very hot noon, that fatal noon, and coming around the shoulder of a hill Brother Juniper stopped to wipe his forehead and to gaze upon the screen of snowy peaks in the distance, then into the gorge below him filled with the dark plumage of green trees and green birds and traversed by its ladder of osier. Joy was in him; things were not going badly. He had opened several little abandoned churches and the Indians were crawling in to early Mass and groaning at the moment of miracle as though their hearts would break. Perhaps it was the pure air from the snows before him; perhaps it was the memory that brushed him for a moment of the poem that bade him raise his eyes to the helpful hills. At all events he felt at peace. Then his glance fell upon the bridge, and at that moment a twanging noise filled the air, as when the string of some musical instrument snaps in a disused room, and he saw the bridge divide and fling five gesticulating ants into the valley below.

Anyone else would have said to himself with secret joy: Within ten minutes myself . . . ! But it was another thought that visited Brother Juniper: "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. And on that instant Brother Juniper made the resolve to inquire into the secret lives of those five persons, that moment falling through the air, and to surprise the reason of their taking off.

* * *

It seemed to Brother Juniper that it was high time for theology to take its place among the exact sciences and he had long intended putting it there. What he had lacked hitherto was a laboratory. Oh, there had never been any lack of specimens; any number of his charges had met calamity,—spiders had stung them; their lungs had been touched; their houses had burned down and things had happened to their children from which one averts the mind. But these occasions of human woe had never been quite fit for scientific examination. They had lacked what our good savants were later to call proper control. The accident had been dependent upon human error, for example, or had contained elements of probability. But this collapse of the bridge of San Luis Rey was a sheer Act of God. It afforded a perfect laboratory. Here at last one could surprise His intentions in a pure state.

You and I can see that coming from anyone but Brother Juniper this plan would be the flower of a perfect skepticism. It resembled the effort of those presumptuous souls who wanted to walk on the pavements of Heaven and built the Tower of Babel to get there. But to our Franciscan there was no element of doubt in the experiment. He knew the answer. He merely wanted to prove it, historically, mathematically, to his converts,—poor obstinate converts, so slow to believe that their pains were inserted into their lives for their own good. People were always asking for good sound proofs; doubt springs eternal in the human breast, even in countries where the Inquisition can read your very thoughts in your eyes.

This was not the first time that Brother Juniper had tried to resort to such methods. Often on the long trips he had to make (scurrying from parish to parish, his robe tucked up about his knees, for haste) he would fall to dreaming of experiments that justify the ways of God to man. For instance, a complete record of the Prayers for Rain and their results. Often he had stood on the steps of one of his little churches, his flock kneeling before him on the baked street. Often he had stretched his arms to the sky and declaimed the splendid ritual. Not often, but several times, he had felt the virtue enter him and seen the little cloud forming on the horizon. But there were many times when weeks went by . . . but why think of them? It was not himself he was trying to convince that rain and drought were wisely apportioned.

Thus it was that the determination rose within him at the moment of the accident. It prompted him to busy himself for six years, knocking at all the doors in Lima, asking thousands of questions, filling scores of notebooks, in his effort at establishing the fact that each of the five lost lives was a perfect whole. Everyone knew that he was working on some sort of memorial of the accident and everyone was very helpful and misleading. A few even knew the principal aim of his activity and there were patrons in high places.

The result of all this diligence was an enormous book, which as we shall see later, was publicly burned on a beautiful Spring morning in the great square. But there was a secret copy and after a great many years and without much notice it found its way to the library of the University of San Marco. There it lies between two great wooden covers collecting dust in a cupboard. It deals with one after another of the victims of the accident, cataloguing thousands of little facts and anecdotes and testimonies, and concluding with a dignified passage describing why God had settled upon that person and upon that day for His demonstration of wisdom. Yet for all his diligence Brother Juniper never knew the central passion of Doña María’s life; nor of Uncle Pio’s, not even of Esteban’s. And I, who claim to know so much more, isn’t it possible that even I have missed the very spring within the spring?

Some say that we shall never know and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.

Part Two

The Marquesa de Montemayor

ANY SPANISH SCHOOLBOY

is required to know today more about Doña María, Marquesa de Montemayor, than Brother Juniper was to discover in years of research. Within a century of her death her letters had become one of the monuments of Spanish literature and her life and times have ever since been the object of long studies. But her biographers have erred in one direction as greatly as the Franciscan did in another; they have tried to invest her with a host of graces, to read back into her life and person some of the beauties that abound in her letters, whereas all real knowledge of this wonderful woman must proceed from the act of humiliating her and of divesting her of all beauties save one.

She was the daughter of a cloth-merchant who had acquired the money and the hatred

Reviews for The Bridge of San Luis Rey

[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.

[suesbooks · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I was very disappointed in this book and do not remember reading it in high school, as most did. I did not care for the writng, as I did for other Wilder books. I did not care for the confusing descriptions of the protagonists, nor did I understand many of his metaphors. Nor for me!

[boredgames · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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

[carmenere_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this book several years ago and this reread confirmed what I knew back then, Wilder can write!Five people in Peru are crossing a bridge when in an instant they all are plunging to their deaths in the valley below.Certainly poetic in style this little novella invites the reader to think about fate, destiny and happenstance. Every reader will walk away with a different interpretation of the events related here and too the aftermath inflicted upon those who were left behind.A classic that will never grow old.

[amandrake_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well-written, of course, and readable with traces of the satire that he would use in later works, but (for me) unconvincing in its final lines and world view.

[firewild · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really, really liked this book. I am glad that the religious theme did not stop me. Despite its brevity, the novel really succeed in bringing all the characters to life for me. He manages to find just the right words to describe the difficult relationship between the old woman and her daughter, balanced on the precarious border between love and selfishness, touching me deeply. The ending was also surprisingly strong with one of the few "purpose of life" ideas that actually makes sense. Great book!

Ironically enough, the afterword, which complains about the first edition of the book going all out to make it appear longer to justify the price, does exactly that. I found it quite boring with excessive reprinting of advanced praise of the first edition and the like. It felt like the publishers crammed it with whatever relevant/ irrelevant info they could find to make it longer.

[over.the.edge · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the story of 5 people, all who lost their lives when a bridge in Peru collapsed. The events of their lives leading up to this are engaging and relevant, I felt the loss of their lives, although,obviously, complete strangers. This was a great read and I will be searching out his other novels. Awesome book, recommended.

[maryreinert · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This short book tells the story of five people who lost their lives when the Bridge of San Luis Rey fell in Peru in the 1700's. Each chapter tells a story of one individual. The narrative begins when Father Junniper thinks he can find a rationale for why some are chosen to die and some are not. Is it that God has called the chosen or that the evil are finding their rewards. An eccentric Marquesa dies just after making a decision to change her life; her servant girl dies along with her. Estaban, a twin who has lost his brother dies while the Captain who he was accompanying is saved because he needs to go the lower road. Uncle Peo, an old friend of a famous actress dies along with her son. Each of these people had some connection to the Abbess of a convent. The final chapter find relatives of the victims visiting the Abbess. Each of the victims was loved by someone; some will be remembered by many and some will be forgotten, but there is a thread of love connecting all.

[starbox_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"The finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below"By sally tarbox on 26 February 2018Format: Kindle EditionIn 1714 Peru, a bridge gives way, killing the five random individuals on it; an old noblewoman, ugly, derided by many, and abandoned by her lovely but cold-hearted daughter; the orphan girl attending her; a depressed young man who has lost his twin brother; an elderly man who 'manages' a celebrated actress; and the young son of said lady, whom he's taking to educate.After the event, a local priest tries to investigate the lives of the victims in a bid to prove a logic to this 'act of God'. While the abbess who knew the dead sees the effect of the tragedy on those left behind and their resultant actions, commenting "there is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."This is a well-written work as Wilder delineates the complex characters of the protagonists. I didn't find it massively engaging as a read, but recognise the literary merit and philosophical debate.

[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.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I saw the movie made from this book (made in 2004 starring Kathy Bates, Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel) but I was somewhat puzzled by the ending. Reading the book made the ending clearer although I would have liked a better explanation as to why Brother Juniper was convicted of heresy and burned. Maybe it is enough to know that this book is set at the time of the Spanish Inquisition and almost anyone could be found heretical. Brother Juniper accepted the decision of the church but I have a hard time with it. And so did the Abbess it seems: The night before she had torn an idol from her heart and the experience had left her pale but firm. She had accepted the fact that it was of no importance whether her work went on or not; it was enough to work...It seemed to be sufficient for Heaven that for a while in Peru a disinterested love had flowered and faded. That seems very sad to me. And yet, the ending is one of the most beautiful thoughts: But soon we shall die and all memory 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.

[pilgrimjess · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

“There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”The book begins: “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below.” Brother Juniper, a Franciscan missionary witnesses the tragedy and deeply affected by the bridge’s collapse, he begins a mission to uncover the truth about the five victims in an attempt to find the answer to “Why did this happen to those five?” In truth The Bridge of San Luis Rey is only a novella comprised of five chapters; the first introduces readers to the tragedy and Brother Juniper’s role in its history. The second tells the stories of the Marquesa de Montemayor” and Pepita, a teenage girl the Marquesa borrowed from a convent to act as a companion after the Marquesa's daughter emigrates to Spain to escape the overbearing love of her mother.Both die in the bridge collapse. In chapter three we learn about Esteban, one half of orphan twins whom distraught at the recent loss of his twin brother Manuel, decides to join a ship's crew for a long voyage which ultimately leads him to be on the bridge at the exact moment of its collapse. In chapter four feature the final two victims, Uncle Pio, the mentor and teacher of local actress and celebrity Camila Perichole. On the day of the bridge’s collapse, Uncle Pio perishes along with Camila’s epileptic son, Jaime, who had recently been entrusted to his careIn the final chapter Brother Juniper realises the error of his initial hypothesis concerning the victims “…the wicked [were] visited by destruction and the good called early to Heaven.” Brother Juniper, deemed a heretic by the Church and is burnt at the stake. Yet despite his work being discredited by the church the collapse has a lasting affect on those left behind, in particular Camila and the Marquesa's daughter Doña Clara with the realization that “But soon we shall die and all memory 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.”Wilder incorporates a number of themes, obsession, isolation, neglect, and death to name but a few but the common thread throughout is love, sexual love, fraternal love and a mother's love. This is a philosophical novella and whilst I cannot truly say that I enjoyed it I did find it thought provoking.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[bradylouie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is beautifully written. The author is witty and wry. Very enjoyable.

[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."

[bookconcierge · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3.5***
The novel begins at noon on July 20, 1714, when the “finest bridge in all Peru” suddenly collapses, sending five people plummeting to their deaths. A Franciscan missionary, Brother Juniper, witnesses the calamity and asks, “Why those five?” He feels this Act of God must have specifically targeted those people, and none of the other thousands of citizens who might have been on the bridge instead. So he investigates the lives of the five victims in an attempt to understand what happened.

This is a moral fable in which Wilder tries to answer the question, “Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual’s own will?” He explores the characters’ motivations in life, their triumphs and disappointments. Its universal appeal is that Wilder is writing about human nature – conflicted, noble, contradictory, loving, and exasperating. He holds a mirror up to the reader’s own soul, asking the reader to examine his or her own actions and reactions.

Then Prime Minister Tony Blair read the closing sentences of this work at the memorial service for British victims of the Sept 11 attack on the World Trade Center: “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.

[lucybrown_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this because it was reviewed in Johnathan Yardley's Second Readings. I have always felt that I should read it but a sort of snobbishness kept me from it. I imagined that it would be one of those little pat pseudo-philosophic novels along the line of The Old Man & the Sea. My judgement was not too far off. Unlike the The Old Man, The Bridge of San Luis Rey is well and elegantly written. The characters seem less stock and there is not penchant for poor dialect. That said I did not love this book. I suppose I have a low tolerance for obvious allegory and "message" stories. However, I didn't dislike it either, the way I disliked Siddhartha and The Old Man. Actually, I loathed those two. Any book I can see someone closing and saying "Wow man, that was heavy," automatically loses a point or two. Now, I like heavy, even love heavy. Hell, I read Spinoza for kicks. However, I want the heaviness to come at me aslant and kick me in the ass or even better sneak up on me a few days later and make my head spin 180 degrees a la Exorcist, rather than come straight at me and hit me between the eyes.

Four stars for the elegance of the prose and the humor which redeem the work.

[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.

[chrisblocker · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Given the beauty of the language and the mere 140 pages of the story, there is no reason not to read The Bridge of San Luis Rey. I wasn't sure what to expect from Wilder, but I was impressed with the way he handled his sentences and the thoughts he put to page. There is beauty in this story, and philosophical questions tucked between the lines.The book is united in theme and stands beneath a promising premise. That said, the various stories had such a detached air that I wasn't quite able to connect. There is a thread--that is the bridge of San Luis Rey--that runs through each story, but without that the stories could just as easily be part of a themed collection. I saw the beauty of the words. I considered the bigger implications. But I never really felt like I was a part of these characters' lives. Perhaps I'm expecting too much in such a short story.

[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!

[gbill_7 · 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.” And so begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which is a small masterpiece. Wilder’s prose is beautiful and he creates great character sketches in a work that is all framed to consider the question “Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual’s own will?” He applies just the right touch artistically for so weighty a subject, and in the end, as in life, the “answer” is really up to the reader. Highly recommended.Some fun facts: Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and graduated from Berkeley High School. The book launched him to immediate worldwide fame; his teaching salary at the time was $3,000 and the book made him $87,000 in 1928 alone, which is about a million dollars in today’s currency. Lastly, David Mitchell fans will recall the character Luisa Rey, named as an homage to this work, as well as perhaps recall the epigraph to Ghostwritten, taken from the end of the first chapter: “And I, who claim to know so much more, isn’t it possible that even I have missed the very spring within the spring?Some say that we shall never know and that to the gods we are like flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.”A couple of other quotes that I loved:On literature:“…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.”And this one on love, which I found that Tony Blair used in a memorial service for British victims of 9/11:“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."

[charlie68_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful little book centring on characters that perish in a tragedy. A bridge collapses in Peru in the 1700s. Ends up where you don't expect.

[bell7_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A bridge in Peru collapses, sending five people plummeting to their deaths. Brother Juniper is determined to show that this is no random chance, and sets out to write the definitive book proving that this is all part of a plan. The unnamed narrator of this book lays out the facts as well, giving us interlocking stories of the people who were on the bridge that fateful day.Was it fate or was it chance? Who were these five people on the bridge, and what brought them to that place on that day in 1714 when the bridge collapsed? Though it's a short book, it manages to pack in quite a lot about these characters and their connections, and leave you with much food for thought. I was much more familiar with Thornton Wilder as a playwright and author of Our Town, but one of my co-workers happened to be reading this for her book club this month. I was in the mood for something a little more challenging that what I'd been reading lately, so I picked it up. I'm glad I did.

[gregorio_roth · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was a good short read, about relationships. A book that was a morality tale sort of. Not sure why it was on the list for the 200 best books from the Modern Library. But at least it was short, and to the point, and did not meander through the valley.

[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.

[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

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I adored Wilder’s Our Town the first time I saw it performed. It’s a simple story, but it reaches something deep within the reader because its poignant message is one we can all relate to. The core moments of the show are about the inevitable joys and sorrows of life. This slim Pulitzer-Prize winner is similar in the fact that it looks at what gives each life meaning.Once again Wilder allows us into the lives of the characters, although this time we are in Lima, Peru. A bridge collapses in 1714 and five people are killed. A priest, Brother Juniper, tries to find some meaning in the accident by researching the lives of the people who were killed. We see each individual who is killed and learn about the people they were close to, including twin brothers, a stage performer, and a spurned mother. Each new life the priest explores is complex and beautiful. There is no black and white in a person’s life. They are not all good or evil; it’s never as simple as that.BOTTOM LINE: A beautiful story about trying to find meaning in tragedy. Our Town remains my favorite piece by Wilder, but I will read more of his work as soon as I can."There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."