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!
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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?
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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. Brother Juniper sets out all his information and is unable to come to any firm conclusions.
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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. Wilder thought of the idea of the book on a global scale, saw its potential, but when it came time to fill it with the actual meat of the story—the exposition—it fell a bit flat.
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And although the more boring aspects of the individual stories fill up the center of the book, the overarching ideas and the frame of the book are quite a bit of fun. The first chapter is extraordinary, dropping off ideas with Pynchon-like speed, as it describes the collapse of the bridge and the subsequent effects it has on the town. We find out that all the stories within the book swirl around Brother Juniper, a devout member of the church who sees divine intention behind every action.
The ties that bind the five of them together. Because why was it those five who had to die? If they had all left a few minutes later or earlier, surely it would have been another set of five to have died off. It is these types of questions that inevitably rise from freak accidents that fuel the drive behind this book. This is where it gets meta. Because traditionally when a reader reads a work of capital L literature, they are in search of a higher meaning behind the words, the ultimate significance behind it all.
Does that make the author God? It also becomes particularly Pynchon-esque at the end for poor old Brother Juniper. Given the parallel between the search for God and the search for inter-textual meaning, the ending is a bit devastating. The question posed originally turns out to be a failure: There are words like randomness, freak accident and these things Just happen.
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The universe is violent and indifferent, and here we all are, trying to make the most sense that we possibly can. Notable Quotes "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. Nothing in man's power can alter the course of law.
Then on some street-corner she would stop, dizzy with despair, and leaning against a wall would long to be taken from a world that had no plan in it. But soon a belief in the great Perhaps would surge up from the depths of her nature and she would fairly run home to renew the candles above her daughter's bed.
What relationship is it in which few words are exchanged, and those only about the details of food, clothing and occupation; in which the two persons have a curious reluctance even to glance at one another; and in which there is a tacit arrangement not to appear together in the city and to go on the same errand by different streets? And yet side by side with this there existed a need of one another so terrible that it produced miracles as naturally as the charged air of a sultry day produces lighting.
The brothers were scarcely aware of it themselves, but telepathy was a common occurrence in their lives, and when one returned home the other was always aware of it when his brother was still several streets away. View all 10 comments. Nov 19, K. You just got home from attending a Christmas party. Your bedroom clock says that it is You change your clothes and about to sleep so you turn off the light. Then your cellphone rings. It is one of your friends who just came from the same party. There is a terrible news.
Five of your friends, the ones that you saw in the same party who boarded together in the same car had a fatal road accident. They are now all dead. You put down the phone. You cannot sleep anymore. So you try to remember all the events that happened before you parted. Then all the things you know about them: Then on to their loved ones, their family, their hobbies, the music they listen to, the books they read Then you ask yourself: What does God want to tell us?
Is it time's up for each them? Or it was just because the driver, Mark also your friend was probably drunk so it was all his fault? Wilder created the character of Brother Juniper who witnessed the falling of a fictional Inca-built suspension bridge in Lima, Peru. He is not a friend to any of the 5 characters but he asks the similar questions trying to prove the omnipresence of God. Specifically, he poses this question on God's Providence: However, in my edition's Afterword , Wilder, probably answering a reader's complaint that the book does not provide enough answers to the question it posits, says that this book is not to solve , i.
A vague comfort is supposed to hover above the unanswered questions 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. Not the answers but my own interpretation for the characters' death.
Like what Dorris Lessing says: In the same way you can interpret on your own the reason why those five friends of yours just died a sudden death. Jul 22, Evan rated it liked it Shelves: I have to admit this book perplexed me a little bit. I found a good deal of it haunting. It is also somewhat aloof and detached. Much is made of the fact that Brother Juniper is trying to discover God's Plan in his misapplied scientific investigation of the sudden deaths of the handful of Peruvians plunged to their death by a collapsing bridge in the s, but Juniper's story just kind of peters out at the end.
The story of the Esteban brothers is the most interesting one, a great short story i I have to admit this book perplexed me a little bit.
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The story of the Esteban brothers is the most interesting one, a great short story in its own right. Although there are moments of overlap among the various characters' narratives, this plays as a collection of short stories all thematically related, more than a fluid narrative. What brought a handful of people to their shared fate? Wilder's protagonist never really finds out, and that's just fine.
It's just that less is made of this protagonist than is initially promised. Wilder keeps it short and sweet, but should he have? Dec 31, Tej rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: Recommended to Tej by: Anyone else would have said to himself with secret joy: He strove to refuse that it could be a mere co-incidence that led only those five people to be there exactly at that particular time. It almost looked as though the pestilence had been directed against the really valuable people in the village of Puerto.
And on that afternoon Brother Juniper took a walk along the edge of the Pacific. He tore up his findings and cast them into the waves; he gazed for an hour upon the great clouds of pearl that hang forever upon the horizon of that sea, and extracted from their beauty a resignation that he did not permit his reason to examine. By virtue of his retrospective research, Brother Juniper, nevertheless, unearthed and deciphered delicate little subtle humane tales laced in existential undertones that are caressing as a feather carried along in a zephyr.
The poignancy of these tales reside in their simplicity and the emotions they elicit are vivid, daubed in varied tones of joy and sadness. The five of them together descending out of their individual stories, to be mauled into smithereens along with the bridge that fell into the very ravine that the bridge bridged. As old as human history, is this question of unfathomable eternity, what schemes govern, what co-incidences decide, what event triggers another and if that chain was somehow interfered with, would the results have been antagonized.
Who decides that what rings fit in and where? All five united by one fate, to fall with the tumbling bridge and lost for eternity or united in the fate they shared. I no longer claim the least influence. What will be, will be. Done against given her age but united in fate with one she was caring unconditionally yet incredulously The beginnings of hope and affection that Pepita had such need to expend would be wounded.
There was in them a curious shame in regard to their resemblance. They had to live in a world where it was the subject of continual comment and joking. But he did understand that Esteban was suffering. He thought he saw pride and wealth confounded as an object lesson to the world, and he thought he saw humility crowned and rewarded for the edification of the city.
But Brother Juniper was not satisfied with his reasons. It was just possible that the Marquesa de Montemayor was not a monster of avarice, and Uncle Pio of self-indulgence. Such persons are raised up in every age; they obstinately insist on transporting their grains of wheat and they derive a certain exhilaration from the sneers of the bystanders. She hurled herself against the obstinacy of her time in her desire to attach a little dignity to women. At midnight when she had finished adding up the accounts of the House she would fall into insane vision of an age when women could be organized to protect women, women travelling, women as servants, women when they are old or ill, the women she had discovered in the mines of Potosi, or in the workrooms of the cloth-merchants, the girls she had collected out of doorways on rainy nights.
Her lips were white. I am all alone. I have nothing in the world. What shall I do? Will you let me show you my work? More blood has been spilled, human blood, over God than may be would have been in the absence of one. With or without God, nature of life is such a caustic and vitriolic cauldron that spills over from time to time over the hapless flood of humanity, and the probability is fairly statistically governed, skewed statistics that we traditionally attribute to the will of proverbial almighty. God is the ultimate epitome of fear who promises hellish reprimands for moral flippancy.
Has such a God really served any purpose till date? Why do we need to have one in the first place? Let God be for once, take care of his own self and us ours. In centuries of evolution that has made us, we must have accrued some knowledge somewhere for building strong citadels of humanity and fortitude to tide us along.
In our fight against the elements, we are always left with our human fortitude, to grapple with, inherently alone as a whole in fighting against odds. Rather than invoking a debatable, dubitable and ethereal God, why not to bridge the islands that are us rather than strengthening the ramparts amongst ourselves on slightest pretexts.
The co-incidences that make us or break us are, invariably, savoury pieces of brilliant art that are splayed on the canvas of life and metaphorical enough to galvanize our tryst with destiny, only if we have eyes to look amidst the haze. In their subtlety, they unveil such beautiful connections and interlinks in the tapestry of life so as to be deserving of being eulogized simply for what they are than to be explained in the name of God or supernatural.
To hell with such God really, let him be if such is his wont… the only union that can keep us in good stead is our mutual love and bonding over the commonality that we share, that of being human.
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