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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN num: 9780060580612
ISBN number: 0060580615
Label: HarperCollins
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 160
Printing Date: January 01, 2004
Publishing house: HarperCollins
Release Date: January 06, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 55756
Studio: HarperCollins
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'On Saturday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.' With this celebrated sentence, Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world.
By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper seeks to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who perished in the tragedy. His study leads to his own death -- and to the author's timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey is now reissued in this handsome hardcover edition featuring a new foreword by Russell Banks. Tappan Wilder has written an engaging and thought-provoking afterword, which includes unpublished notes for the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, illuminating photographs, and other remarkable documentary material. Granville Hicks's insightful comment about Wilder suggests an inveterate truth: 'As a craftsman he is second to none, and there are few who have looked deeper into the human heart.'
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Rated by buyers 
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This book is wonderful--a great story and very thought-provoking. The reading by Sam Waterston could not be better!
Rated by buyers -
Thornton Wilder is perhaps best known for his play, "Our Town," which is the staple of high school drama groups and this book, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. I very first read the book in high school, now more than 40 years ago and sadly chose it for its length - a short assignment! Some of the negative reviews of the book seem to be from these young, very first time readers - I would have been among them on my very first reading. Almost certainly you need some maturity (read: life experiences) to fully appreciate Wilder's wonderful, dense, evocative prose.
The year was 1714, the "Sun King," Louis XIV was still on the throne in France, and Peru was an established colony of Spain, when the bridge collapsed. One of the sub-themes of the book is the relationship of the colony with the mother country, Spain, and Peru's efforts to mature, in terms of the cultural and social life available. The central strength of the novel is Wilder's incisive portraits of four individuals: the physically ugly, lonely noveaux-riche, the Marquesa de Montemayor; Estaban, the sole survivor of twin orphans; and Uncle Pio, the wheeler-dealer who "trained" the actress Perichole. The very first three fell to their deaths when the bridge collapsed, along with two others, Pepita, the assistant of the Marquesa, and Jaime, the son of Perichole. These two are not characterized in detail, and thus might be considered so much "collateral damage."
Examples of Wilder's succinct and meaningful prose are, in terms of the Archbishop: "A curious and eager soul was imprisoned in all this lard, but by dint of never refusing himself a pheasant or a goose or his daily procession of Roman wines, he was his own bitter jailer." Has schadenfreude ever been better defined that the reaction of the population to the knowledge that the glamorous actress Perichole had become disfigured by smallpox: "...henceforth any attention paid to her must spring from a pity full of condescension and faintly perfumed with satisfaction at so complete a reversal."?
The overall framework of the novel is the search for meaning in this accident, faithfully pursued by a Brother Juniper who investigated each of the characters and their connections with their relations and friends. For his efforts, the Catholic Church burned him at the stake for "heresy" since his conclusion was that it was "God's will" that they were chosen to be called "home." Wilder's own conclusion is equally unsatisfying: "There is a land of the living, and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
It was humbling to realize that Wilder wrote this book, with its intense character sketches when he was still under 30. The weakness, despite the Pulitzer, was the overall framework and his facile, trite conclusions as to meaning, in a universe devoid of same, despite our best efforts. Overall, a much better book to read in one's 60's than when one is 16.
Rated by buyers 
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Disappointing experience with a prize-winning author. This must be a work for a narrow audience, probably fellow writers. I found it simultaneously clearly written and subsequent to impossible to understand the purpose.
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I picked up this book after hearing it discussed by Dr. David Allen White following the tragic collapse of the Minneapolis bridge in 2007. Events like that cause us to ask--why do tragedies like this happen? Why did the bridge fall?
In this book, the author sets up the same question but set in the 1700s in Lima, Peru. A bridge has collapsed, causing the death of 5 souls. Was it fate, was it God's will, were they good souls or bad souls? The author never answers the question but seems to indicate that it is not an answerable question this side of eternity. This is a short, intriguing novel with an important question, even though a little slow moving at times.
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After having read The Bridge Of San Luis Rey one can easily understand why it has never been out of print since 1927. The characters are unforgetable and their story so very moving. A story I will want to read again and again.
Bob Hislop
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