Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Bridge of San Luis Rey
    The Bridge of San Luis Rey
    The Bridge of San Luis Rey
    Ebook112 pages2 hours

    The Bridge of San Luis Rey

    By Thornton Wilder

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The Bridge of San Luis Rey 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 witnesses 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. Is there a direction or meaning in lives beyond that of an individual’s own will? Powerful and Compelling. Thornton Wilder is a masterful story teller and this was his most important novel. Pulitzer Prize Winner! #1 Best Seller!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilder Publications, Inc.
    Release dateApr 13, 2023
    ISBN9781515460015
    Author

    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.

    Read more from Thornton Wilder

    Related to The Bridge of San Luis Rey

    Related ebooks

    Classics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Deliverance Is Seldom: On Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Passenger’ and ‘Stella Maris’

      Oct 25, 2022

      Sorrow, in 'The Passenger' and 'Stella Maris,' is the likeliest underpinning of reality. The post Deliverance Is Seldom: On Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Passenger’ and ‘Stella Maris’ appeared first on The Millions.

      11 min read

    • Article

      Former Agent Says, 'Border Patrol Does Good Work ... But There's Tension There'

      Feb 6, 2018

      In The Line Becomes a River, Francisco Cantú looks back on his time as a Border Patrol agent. He says, in his experience, "No matter what obstacle we put at the border, it's going to be subverted."

      3 min read

    • Article

      Don’t Be a Dick: Colum McCann’s Advice to Young Writers

      Apr 3, 2017

      I. Don’t Be a Dick Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind. –Henry James Hey, you. Over there in the corner. Yeah, you, with that half-assed grin. Don’t turn away, I

      5 min read

    • Article

      Field Notes From My Dementia

      Jun 22, 2017

      Field Notes From My Dementia
      7 min read

    • Article

      'Beneath A Ruthless Sun' Is A Wrenching Story Of Bigotry – And An Inspiring Tale Of Heroes

      Apr 26, 2018

      This kind of narrative is familiar territory for Gilbert King, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his remarkable 2012 bestseller "Devil in the Grove," another look at violence, injustice, and heroic opposition.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Orwell’s ISLAND

      Jul 17, 2020

      Orwell’s ISLAND
      5 min read

    • Article

      King Charles’s Ruthless Revenge

      Sep 29, 2022

      IN ACT OF OBLIVION, Robert Harris brings his unrivalled ability to create vivid historical characters within tightly-honed plots to the turbulent Civil Wars and Restoration of mid-seventeenth century Britain and America. It is 1660 and Charles II has

      3 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Castillo, Hokeah, Murphy, and More

      Jul 26, 2022

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Elaine Castillo, Oscar Hokeah, Dwyer Murphy, and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to help The Milli

      4 min read

    • Article

      Piece Of Mind

      Apr 23, 2019

      Over the year-end holidays last year, my wife and I rented an apartment near where our children live, and our twin granddaughters had several sleepovers there. We decided to get them something to absorb their attention, and time, for several weeks: a

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Story of Plover

      Apr 17, 2020

      The Story of Plover
      6 min read

    • Article

      Jil Sander

      Mar 10, 2017

      Jil Sander
      1 min read

    • Article

      Revisiting Malcolm Lowry’s ‘Under The Volcano’ On The Day Of The Dead

      Jan 17, 2019

      The ultimate tragedy of Under the Volcano is that of humanity’s wasted potential. Can, Lowry pondered, the psyche repair itself? The post Revisiting Malcolm Lowry’s ‘Under the Volcano’ on the Day of the Dead appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Visible Man

      Dec 2, 2019

      Visible Man
      4 min read

    • Article

      Vernon Sullivan: The Bestselling Writer Who Didn’t Exist

      Mar 30, 2017

      In 1946, a novel called I Spit On Your Graves (J’irai cracher sur vos tombes) appeared in France. The book was a hardboiled thriller written by a newcomer, a black American writer named Vernon Sullivan. The translator was a French author well-connect

      9 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Oct 16, 2023

      What a thing of joy is a new Francis Spufford novel. Golden Hill, his debut, was a transporting piece of historical fiction that captured life in early New York in all its quirk and contingence, and deservedly won a bag of awards. His second, Light P

      3 min read

    • Article

      Zero

      May 10, 2019

      Zero
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Bridge of San Luis Rey

    4/5

    1,028 ratings66 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      ”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.
    • 2/5
      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!
    • 5/5
      strangely moving. a masterclass in characterisation, summary, and an interesting structure that breeds pathos and bittersweet irony
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      "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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 2/5
      “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.
    • 3/5
      “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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      This book is beautifully written. The author is witty and wry. Very enjoyable.
    • 5/5
      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."
    • 3/5
      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.”
    • 5/5
      A powerful book.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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!
    • 5/5
      “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."
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      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
    • 4/5
      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."

    Book preview

    The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder

    U9dbook_preview_excerpt.htmlZK hEٲ$rb>8$!RVhBw*4[+ /|&>jzT(1B}21ÇW8^._<_>y5#bٰ1K|~zb\:6qognXuLb2K*3vK R߼lq:7 lɻyb ^er7Fcv).w^z'/f!> y`ߍKz=6/]a|W ־>džMoy"2$m{V||?u]o y-Zѭ3I{v2_!Sy 'r! Gȗ;?\#P9r,*# A:?{2a7.2^)Qv/a\ x31tϣetɒ9EzmADG+g|E4,S\oUf6#+/溘\2#fC QƚvXoyϾDS|9plgvF UhfXlORtLa˴Dt1SLZDiJA&waCE.nh!#hxl\Q'`ۣ'@ȁSN_@)}aKtۧ8Hp#2.ô=tk{ H@RT;;;e{¼ w1; qetգuD& @%Hit!(Pe{G'FatpdԠYq8X&.9T*|-$gzGJx(;8-9ATj$2bAu n"Y9τWN $ð* Od)lkO4΁y53c hB=H| JU&OIU aB]٫m B|%J % KmQC6{Y5gD[DmqRC(i>AQ/őER7B5,"*\&֡TZj >Mwí)si(K.Q@\V$'(uG#0O> !Wvnʒu| +-kfx_#Zxa`ud(EjDabEdHbVp veᚉmcFsX+b͕֡%Z>7^Beq']QN Xzlx  ZbuP#eܡeF$c왐S!$&J#>iR*4f(]cH;`ǵc&~I*2E4-fU )Vgp\ RJZ 7GS2(pflF"rQI6-LSQ)VUz$/v&.3psbDE.–Vl!VbM v -:= A_F3`hF*ϝ"Jn3Mkq!>aRQ 7P\zx%%b_t;˲_(Ť WcQz,K,UIe8"fori< n{N'U*9m:9,Ո@š0֧^ʚB (@pV%_QJ)=+ H 9HNU@JX+Ap|CΦDO.3_aB|-9sz ַ*"~ɍ󻯍h[se<(9gэu%) fwr+\YjESjL&?1)Od}.x÷-FÏp=9E RIȳ!+EaE\}\2;yx .Obr 0G&87W^KGS9n`wjTkL.@Y^1Eɑu5z-9x`< +ϖWSS$z_B@THn҂g6׻FM!L aPw[I0&' R:Me@lhLnk`tQ HJ#%b mH>ӥ``lv#Y+5b`އZZds 7 ^kTG~Qϼ e:j(vWfy61=hf4f>|x;F{L\=$% +u{ Rʉj K%TEZLjeߍm\? K ĸ dC&8#qя.Kt=InXXpyFeZ)1m%Hŷ7ϙ$5 ʵlThS!ُt2+N_EcFq ZWcӹ B:R %*' 3HS %hJʂ RIʆvVTc6L?QNn=مE_9n *G+iAer1s:`֔|FrKǸHX\2PΫj&tOj)!~7Q}V:6 I`İɞnF yHm+[H"^ƹ,dl͊J6xfFtxMJ^7qYTIang:c|q~}2zvmb[h.Rv$M|d'=d+Idl.E:7s5L nI% 2# fm™3b > Xs^AWN`!҆:g#NtP-sj<'A+HYdg dP'{i]r5@"8K$ Ke-:NH)$b,'aѤ\*y=6vGVTN ^s+X?(&wKJ5fI|tY▹v|8ru"2J_l'hv6 Bd=KQE~%KY&;\\pj2YPo1 e5HUf=ĎZj:5: ׸,N[K qr;'t]p3B>H.X?Vs"L,j֜1L("SY% ViF='Z8C 4m)8)FjkVnEXeG)>—g? Z[C 9V J/1C s-:{1?]'X529#+zDQu-K24'":r:RTPp!* H` wq/62MG6v2<;Mci)&Z,..]Xm*  e"mK~+ka,BێGm#3ʥ%/ =҂3NQ!d+#k6XOY_keRa f]/%?h~*(Eo"?ϝy^ʦ:p%鮤A4~YW%,k^6=%-))g`x%k \ݴr'RcsE_( P=Ӳ&-ZFZY׸O_pyZt]dP߼X"RnGF?x$
    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1