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Knocking on every door in the small capital city of Lima, talking with the people, filling many notebooks, writing a long book afterwards, from six years of an exhaustive investigation. Nevertheless , can anyone really know another person? The locals were greatly shocked, the land where frequent earthquakes bring sudden death, tidal waves, that crush and destroy coastal cities, rampant disease, which decimates the frightened population, occurs too often.
Did they think the century old , Inca made bridge of vines and twigs, was going to last forever. Or maybe that much used ancient artificial structure, linking the towns of Lima and Cuzco, would always be safe An "Act of God," as the lawyers say, changed everyone's perspective. A royal old, lonely lady, an orphan girl, a surviving, grieving, twin boy, the uncle of a famous actress, and her sickly son, all perished on the bridge Later the somber Requiem Mass at the Cathedral, in Lima, for the poor victims, with the Archbishop presiding, the Viceroy in attendance, as are all the notable people of the city.
Poignant story that is sad at heart, no happy endings , but asks the question, is life worth living You only, can answer that A new bridge made of stone has been built, where the former legendary one was Symbol of hope and the indomitable spirit of mankind, will prevail over adversity May it always be that way. View all 23 comments. The story is patently sarcastic, gently so to be sure, which is part of its artistry, but sarcastic nonetheless.
The only examples of love in the story are either obsessive fixation or guilty desire. The story shares precisely the same theme as that of Lear: The story also shares with Lear a persistent ambivalence about where and how such justice might be perceived. Where Wilder differs radically from Shakespeare is in his consistent sarcasm about his context: Spanish American culture, Peruvian colonial administration, the Catholic Church, and every one of his characters.
Brother Juniper is his first target: What he had lacked hitherto was a laboratory. The Marquesa and Pepita die just after discovering their misdirected loyalties. Esteban, being persuaded to live without his brother, falls to his death the next morning. Uncle Pio and Jaime have no sort of conversion at all before they end up in the abyss. Not only is there no discernible pattern, there are no narrative implications of their deaths. They are all merely dead.
And Brother Juniper is despised and killed because of his interest in their lives. Thus it seems to me sentimental claptrap to interpret the story as endorsing the redemptive power of love. Why he would then cap his story with praise of an absent virtue is a mystery those who enjoy melodrama will have to explain. This is farce not tragedy. View all 24 comments. But, actually, I think the religious factor of this novel is just a small part of something which affects all of us: When tragedy falls upon our loved ones, or perhaps not even that, perhaps a news story captures our attention of young children involved in a fatal accident, completely in the wrong place at the wrong time - when life presents us with such situations as these, it seems it is a common element of human nature to ask that question which has plagued philosophers, priests, historians and scientists for millennia.
This book begins with the collapse of the San Luis Rey bridge in Peru. Brother Juniper witnesses the disaster and watches as five people plummet to their deaths in the gorge below. He finds himself wondering why those people at that exact point were chosen to die, what it was about their lives that shaped such a destiny for them.
We are taken on an emotional journey into the lives of the deceased, exploring questions about life, death, religion, faith and chance. Did these five people die because of some grave sin that doomed their souls? Or was it something far more complicated than that? There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but there may never be two that love one another equally well.
The book can be viewed as several gradually entwining short stories which feature very different lives that end in the same unfortunate way. It is quite a painful read, especially when looking at the relationship between Dona Maria and her daughter, the former longing for the latter's love but unsure how to obtain it.
Knowing the outcome of each tale adds a looming cloud of despair to the stories and makes the characters' situations that much more tragic. What many see as this book's major weakness and I found to be its greatest strength was the lack of answers to the questions first pondered by Brother Juniper when he witnessed the collapse of the bridge. Wilder purposely leaves the ending open for interpretation as to whether these people were the victims of chance or deliberately targeted as part of God's greater plan.
The only certainty is that, in one way or another, love brought each of those people to that bridge at that exact point. And I believe the ambiguity makes it all the more powerful. View all 14 comments. Feb 17, Jason Koivu rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is not mere writing.
This is poetic philosophy. For all I knew, it took place somewhere along the Californian coast along with all the other Sans and Santas. But no, this is set in Peru. I love when a story transports me some place I've never been before. The concept in a nutshell as explained on Wikipedia: It tells t This is not mere writing. 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 won the Pulitzer Prize in This is not a family saga of epic proportions. It takes a slice or two of life and examines it. It does this three times for five people. The numbers are only slightly off and the stories don't all focus on one incident, but this is still quite reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon , itself based on two short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa.
The people and their problems are varied and interesting. Their choices and why they chose them are made even more so by Wilder. Maybe this isn't 5 star perfection, but it is damn good. View all 8 comments. Feb 26, Seemita rated it really liked it Shelves: Let me draw a scene for you. You are standing at the balcony of a high rise building and looking down at the busy road of the evening hours.
You spot a fleet of coloured cars, nudging each other with a relaxed urgency, you see little boys in nickers and little girls in frocks tugging their mothers for sweet somethings, you see ebullient couples stealing a kiss while keeping an eye on the pedestrians, you locate the lesser-privileged scrapping at the abandoned baskets for respectable leftovers, y Let me draw a scene for you.
You spot a fleet of coloured cars, nudging each other with a relaxed urgency, you see little boys in nickers and little girls in frocks tugging their mothers for sweet somethings, you see ebullient couples stealing a kiss while keeping an eye on the pedestrians, you locate the lesser-privileged scrapping at the abandoned baskets for respectable leftovers, you see the wanderers leaning on the poles, watching the scene, just like you.
Does anything bind you to them? Does anything at all, bind you to any one of them on the road? With a little thought, both of us would hiss out, yes. At Level 1, it is the world we live in; the air we breathe, the trees we see, the smoke we inhale, the fog we fight - they are all the same for us and them. At Level 2, it is the labyrinth of emotions we hold close; the love we feel, the tears we shed, the impatience we possess, the amusement we harbour — they are common in us and them. And at Level 3, the highest, we are bound by the truth of Life and Death; while on this side of the Life-Death Bridge, we are all huddled into the animated and raucous jungle of Life and once we cross over to the other side of this bridge, our dissimilarities, once again merge into the silent ocean of Death.
But who should tell us how to cross this bridge whenever we are called upon to? There is no easy answer but Wilder tries to give us one in this delicately weaved story of six people. When the imposing Bridge of San Luis Rey, breaks on a fateful day, it goes down taking the lives of five random people in its arms. This incident shakes no Peruvian native as much as Brother Juniper. He is besieged by a strong urge to unearth the reasons behind the choice of victims. Was there anything common in them besides their appointed date, time, place and instrument of death?
The discrepancy between faith and the facts is greater than is generally assumed. In a desire to understand His intentions in a pure state , he sets in motion many interviews, reference sets, neighbourhood versions and historical records to draw concrete evidence about these five people who led largely different lives: In the flood of motherly affection and in the muck of orphaned loneliness, in the war of distilled priorities and in the swamp of brotherly abandonment, even in the shadow of vanquished lessons, Brother Juniper gropes for the sky that protected these five souls till it burst open on the call of Death.
It is not clear if Wilder wished to reinforce any spiritual truth or religious dogma but he certainly established an inspiring line of beauty in ordinary things, which intersperses a futile life with smoked humor and infectious spunk. After stroking the picture of each of the five victims with their respective color brushes for a laborious six years, Brother Juniper is sombre at last when the final picture exhibits the masterstroke, merging all the colors into a single shade.
There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning. View all 28 comments. Aug 17, Ruby Granger rated it really liked it Shelves: Seeing as I study spanish, I loved the hispanic undertones to this book and enjoyed translating snippets from Castilian into English. Not only this, but there was a strong Catholic undercurrent in the novel, no doubt a consequence of the denomination's popularity in the hispanic world, and this made for enjoyable analysing. The novel is told by means of three separate stories, each one sending with the same event: It's a beautiful representation of human community and the connections Seeing as I study spanish, I loved the hispanic undertones to this book and enjoyed translating snippets from Castilian into English.
It's a beautiful representation of human community and the connections which exist between us. Dec 23, Dolors rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: Believers and non believers. What force propelled them to be walking across the bridge at the particular instant of the misfortune? Were they selected by some Divine Providence for some inscrutable purpose? Because those who survive might obtain less wisdom, might live less intensely than those predestined or fortuitously condemned to death, as Brother Juniper reflects after tragedy strikes: Why perpetuate this legend of selflessness?
Why keep this thing alive, this rumour of disinterestedness? Maybe the key to all the unanswerable questions lays there. Maybe the rejected are in need to cross an allegorical bridge to find love and solace, either in the world of the living or in the world of the dead. Maybe insignificant humans are part of an indecipherable greater scheme of the universe. Maybe nothing is scripted and capricious randomness rules the world. But even in the most absurd of scenarios, erring humans will need to cross the bridge of fear and find the courage to love some time or another.
And Love , my friend, might be the one and only answer. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning. View all 47 comments. The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a beautifully written book full of eternal questions.
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 surp The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a beautifully written book full of eternal questions.
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. Crossing so many bridges during our life we inexorably approach the bridge that will collapse under our feet. View all 6 comments. This is a classic novel that has been on my radar simply because it is on many "must read" lists. A Pulitzer Prize winning best seller that has been made into 3 movies and has occasionally been an influence on other novels, I figured this was a book I should eventually get to.
I am settling on 3. Not sure if I should round up or round down. This leads to three intertwined backstories that all end in the collapse of the bridge of San Luis Rey. Such a cool concept, it was enough to keep me interested to see what he figures out! The best part for me was the writing. I like Wilder's writing style and storytelling. It went a long way towards elevating my rating of this book. My biggest criticism is the stories themselves.
They just really weren't all that interesting to me. In fact, after I was done, I went to find a synopsis of the book on Wikipedia to see if I had missed anything - I had not! What I read and remembered is exactly what Wikipedia said. So, perhaps this was more interesting to people living at the time it was released? Sales would seem to indicate so. I recommend this book if you like classics or need to complete a must read list. But, I think I have just talked myself into rounding down. May 30, Algernon rated it it was amazing Shelves: Pulitzer prize novels have been a mixed bag for me, so I approached this winner without high expectations, especially as the movie version I have seen a few years back, has been OK, but not all that memorable.
Well, I changed my opinion in only a couple of pages, as I kept picking post-it notes to put down ideas and quotes. First, I was attracted by the sparse elegance of the text and the quotable sparkling of the author's wit, but these estethical delights were soon overshadowed by the pain Pulitzer prize novels have been a mixed bag for me, so I approached this winner without high expectations, especially as the movie version I have seen a few years back, has been OK, but not all that memorable.
First, I was attracted by the sparse elegance of the text and the quotable sparkling of the author's wit, but these estethical delights were soon overshadowed by the pain and suffering of the characters, both the ones that perished in the collapse of the San Luis Rey bridge, and those left behind. Brother Juniper, a Franciscan monk, is witness to the collapse of an ancient Inca bridge in , and decides to divine God's plan for humanity by trying to find out why the five victims of the accident were chosen and not someone else: Set in a period of time when the Inquisition still dominates the Spanish World, it takes courage to try to figure things out by yourself instead of accepting blindly the dogma handed down from the leaders of the Church, but brother Juniper, like every one of us, has doubts and will spend six year combing through every little detail of the five lives that were cut short: 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. The author has stated that the idea of the novel came from conversations with his own father about the nature of Divinity: Strict Puritans imagine God all too easily as a petty schoolmaster who minutely weights guilt against merit, and they overlook God's 'Caritas' which is more all-encompassing and powerful. This theme of trying to determine what validates a life and what purpose, what road is the proper one to pursue in a probably arbitrary universe, is one I can become fully involved with, even if I don't personally subscribe to any established cult.
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. After the slightly academical introduction, the rest of the story leaves brother Juniper at his task, and concentrates on the character of the victims. Here the talent of the author really shines, both in painting a vibrant interior life in only a couple of paragraphs, and in going directly at the essence of each person's motivation, ignoring the trivial details that will hobble brother Juniper inquest.
From the first story, of Dona Maria, Marquesa de Montemayor, and her companion Pepita, it becomes clear that the defining trait to be studied will be the capacity for love: Later the theme of love will be replaced by the need for courage, for leaving behind selfishness and for honesty in admitting your own mistakes.
The second story is about brotherly love and passionate love, self sacrifice and the pain of surviving the loss of a loved one. Esteban and Manuel are identical twins, raised in a convent and later sharing adventures on the road as they try their hand at temporary jobs. Esteban is defined initially by his devotion to his brother, and later by remorse about things left unsaid and paths not taken. The third story is my favorite: He is weary and world wise, but entirely without bitterness: His eyes are as sad as those of a cow that has been separated from its tenth calf.
As a modern day Pygmalion, he finds a rough jewel of a girl singing popular songs in a taverna, and he will take her under his wing, train her and cherish her into a formidable career as the greatest actress of her time. When his protegee is turning away for him, he tries to start over with her son, the fifth and last victim of the accident, and the embodiment of the perfect innocent in this game of weighing rights and wrongs. From Uncle Pio comes my favorite passage, one that reminded me of Chance Wayne from "Sweet Bird of Youth" and his observation in the lighthouse about how there are only two kinds of people in the world.
This is the same thing, coming from Thornton Wilder: He divided the inhabitants of this world into two groups, into those who had loved and those who had not. I have mentioned the central characters in the drama at San Luis Bridge, but the survivors are as important to the story as these five. They are intermingled with the fate of the five, coming in and out of their lives in a game of "six degrees of separation" where everybody is ultimately connected with everybody else and part of the same tapestry.
His advice about coping with pain and loss is worth noting: We do what we can. We push on, Esteban, as best we can. It isn't for long, you know. Time keeps going by. You'll be surprised at the way time passes. The richness of the Spanish cultural heritage shines in their dialogues in a way that reminds me of another favorite author, describing Madrid cultural scene about years earlier: She moves between the twin brothers, the Viceroy, Uncle Pio, The Abbess, like a liant to the disparate stories gathered that fatefull day on the bridge.
For her, I have selected a passage describing travelling with Uncle Pio, an invitation to enjoy life and adventure: They went to Mexico, their odd clothes wrapped up in the self-same shawl. They slept on beaches, they were whipped at Panama and shipwrecked on some tiny Pacific islands plastered with the droppings of birds. They tramped through jungles delicately picking their way among snakes and beetles.
They sold themselves out as harvesters in a hard season. Nothing in the world was very surprising to them. She is the dedicated worker for the poor, the sick, the abandoned, the lost souls, the one to emulate and admire for not giving up the thankless job of moving the world forward. Her closing remark about the power of love to bridge the chasm between the living and the dead is well documented, so I will end my review with another of her revelations: My recommendations is to read it and find out why.
View all 5 comments. Nov 18, Connie rated it really liked it Shelves: The first sentence of this novella grabs our attention: Was it fate or divine intervention? For six years Brother Juniper studied the lives of these five people looking for patterns in their lives, or reasons that their deaths might be part of God's plan. The nar The first sentence of this novella grabs our attention: The narrator claims to know even more about the five victims and the people important to them.
The common theme running through their lives, and extending into the future, is love in many forms. Jul 12, Paul rated it really liked it Shelves: It is set in Peru and is centred on the collapse of a rope bridge which killed five people. A Franciscan witnesses the collapse and sets out to find out why those five people died and not others. Brother Juniper feels that the mind of God must be logical and knowable and there must be a scientific method of working out why those particular people die. He therefore sets ou 4.
He therefore sets out to find out all he can about the five who died and their stories are the bulk of the book.
Editorial Reviews. About the Author. Jack Lehman has authored many books of fiction, non fiction and poetry. He lives in Wisconsin not far from where Thornton. 6P9HHWR3IO > A Beer with Thornton Wilder and the Village Poet (Numbered Poems): Fictional / Doc (Numbered Poems): Fictional Autobiography in 3. Acts.
Brother Juniper sets out all his information and is unable to come to any firm conclusions. Unfortunately the Church takes a dim view of his work and he and his book are burnt. Wilder said that his work was a reflection on arguments he had with his father, who was a strict Calvinist. 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.
Whatever other philosophical and religious questions are being pondered, this is the point; the real bridge is not physical but in and of the heart. This is why the novel is so often quoted and well remembered. There has even been an opera! I had high hopes for this and it started with an incredible opening sentence. But the whole thing remained curiously flat to me despite some detailed sympathetic characters and an interesting premise. I think my reaction may have more to do with my state of mind than the book itself. In the early s in Peru, five random travelers are in the wrong place at the wrong time when crossing an old Incan bridge and go splat.
The book gives a glimpse at the trials and tribulations of the people who died and the circumstances that had them on the bridge at that exact moment.
From the afterward in this edition, Wilder deliberately kept the reader at a distance so that we can view what happened somewhat dispassionately. This is one that I ended up admiring as a technical accomplishment rather than liking as a story. View all 7 comments. Neither are we the playthings of fickle deities, nor are we held tenderly in the hand of some giant all-seeing ineffable being in the sky. I thought this had all been thrashed out in the 18th century - the old "Some say that we shall never know and that to the gods we are like flies that 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.
I thought this had all been thrashed out in the 18th century - the old theodicy problem that so exercised Leibniz, didn't that all come to a head in when the Lisbon earthquake killed tens of thousands? Heinrich von Kleist took up the theme again in , in Das Erdbeben in Chili , based on a historical earthquake in Santiago de Chile in Kleist's story is a truly radical indictment of any attempt to interpret natural disasters as the will of god.
It can only be done by performing back flips that outrage any sense of natural justice - in his story, this turns out to be not merely pointless but shockingly, violently, disturbingly disastrous. So Wilder is ploughing a pretty well-worked furrow, still furrowing his own brow over the question in I suppose even if you leave transcendental beings out of it, that sense of natural justice still remains.
Humans like a nice direct line between cause and effect, which in itself is questionable in our messily interconnected world. But even more delusional is the idea that for every effect there must be a cause. No, actually sometimes things are purely random. A question I cannot connect with. Why ask 'why' at all? The very question is absurd. Basically, this is the conclusion that Wilder reaches too. We are ants, and we could fall into the abyss at any time. We are here on earth for a while, then we die. Love is the only survival, the only meaning. View all 31 comments.
Apr 14, Stephen M rated it really liked it Recommends it for: The book also represents some of the ideas that were swirling around at the time in the modernist canon, all those ideas that were the precursor of the meta-fictive pomo literature that was to come some years later. The first I became interested in it was per the recommendation of Mr. Mitchell, who called it the perfect little book. He uses a line from the opening chapter as the epigraph for his debut Ghostwritten and also names a character from the book Cloud Atlas after the bridge: Mitch about it being a masterpiece, I do recognize some of its brilliance.
And anyone who is a fan of the contemporary writer, will immediately recognize what drew D. The meat of San Luis Rey is divided up into three short stories. Each one centers on a character that dies in a bridge collapse at the end of each story. The bridge is in a small town of Peru and is a cross-road for the major cities of Lima and Cuzco. When it collapses it kills five people in the process. With each story, we learn more about the town, through the perspectives of those that are killed.
The first is the Marquesa de Montemayor. Her story mostly revolves around her struggle to connect with her daughter, and the majority of the exposition is carried in the letters that she addresses to her daughter who lives as a wealthy affluent member of royalty in Spain. Even setting aside the fact that the depiction of the Marquesa is slightly awash in antiquated notions of feminine hysteria, this is not necessarily the strongest character of the cast, as she spends the majority of her time bemoaning her lonely predicament and the ways in which both her husband and daughter have left her behind.
The second story is about twin brothers Manuel and Esteban, who are so similar in every respect that no one can tell them apart. They are inseparable not just by proximity but by emotional connection. The way in which Wilder describes the two of them is almost indistinguishable.
Obviously, it is a nice play on the closest possible connection two separate people can form. Given the context, a book preoccupied with trying to push people together, this gives a slightly different take on what it means to be close to another person. Narratively speaking they are the same person. But obviously the collapse of the bridge in the town the bridge being a symbol for the commercial connections we form as societies becomes the ultimate wedge between the brothers. This section was certainly the most intriguing from a character and thematic perspective.
Uncle Pio is the lover and manager of Perichole, and the majority of the story is dedicated to their squabbles, bickerings and whatever else it is that couples argue about. The main flaw of the book, is that the ideas far outweigh the content within. I suspect that Mr. To add more books, click here. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. Want to Read saving… Error rating book.
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