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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
I absolutely loved this book. So much.
It is long, and admittedly a little confusing at the beginning because there are 5 brothers to keep track of, plus it skips around in time a little bit.
5 boys, growing up in Australia, telling the story of their lives and the lives of their parents. It is so good. So good. I loved it.
I cried.
Recommend!
It is long, and admittedly a little confusing at the beginning because there are 5 brothers to keep track of, plus it skips around in time a little bit.
5 boys, growing up in Australia, telling the story of their lives and the lives of their parents. It is so good. So good. I loved it.
I cried.
Recommend!
3.5
If you can get through the first third of the book, which was confusing and somewhat overwritten in terms of lyrical language and syntax, what unfolds is a beautiful story of love, loss and family. I found this book to be best read with little interruption because it still required a tremendous amount of focus on my part. While many sections were absolutely gorgeously written, others fell into the same confused, hard to follow prose from the beginning. Given the mixed reviews, I am glad I finished it, but what could have been a masterpiece just seemed too overworked at times.
If you can get through the first third of the book, which was confusing and somewhat overwritten in terms of lyrical language and syntax, what unfolds is a beautiful story of love, loss and family. I found this book to be best read with little interruption because it still required a tremendous amount of focus on my part. While many sections were absolutely gorgeously written, others fell into the same confused, hard to follow prose from the beginning. Given the mixed reviews, I am glad I finished it, but what could have been a masterpiece just seemed too overworked at times.
I'm not giving this three stars because it was a bad book. It's a beautifully written book, but not for me. I feel it's over encumbered by its prose.
Bridge of Clay is the story of five brothers, grieving for their mother and finding a way to keep going. It isn’t told in a linear fashion, and there are many elements with a very slow reveal. It’s about the destructive power of loss, and also about love; how brothers love each other, parental love, romantic love. Not as broadly recommendable as The Book Thief, it’s a much slower, sometimes a little vague or confusing, but deeply emotional book.
Gets off to a bit of a rough/confusing start, but I think it would be much less confusing on a re-read. Zusak’s prose is so poetic that if you’re not following along the epithets used to describe characters can make the plot a bit hard to follow, but the last 200 pages or so were amazing. I’m glad I stuck it out, because the first part of the book was rough (not sure if it was because of me or the book.)
A remarkable story of migration, love, forgiveness and the bond between brothers.
This is adult fiction that feels more YA than intended, due to the John Green-esque teen romance. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is difficult to read that jump from one tone to another without disrupting the overall story structure.
In my opinion, the writing was at its best when focused on the camaraderie of the brothers and the building of the bridge done both literally and figuratively.
EDIT: I’ve just learned that this book is technically classed as YA. It certainly feels YA at times but I wouldn’t have pegged it as a YA novel (and I’m a big YA reader). Tone-wise, I would compare it to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.
This is adult fiction that feels more YA than intended, due to the John Green-esque teen romance. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is difficult to read that jump from one tone to another without disrupting the overall story structure.
In my opinion, the writing was at its best when focused on the camaraderie of the brothers and the building of the bridge done both literally and figuratively.
EDIT: I’ve just learned that this book is technically classed as YA. It certainly feels YA at times but I wouldn’t have pegged it as a YA novel (and I’m a big YA reader). Tone-wise, I would compare it to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.
Who didn't love The Book Thief? And how many years have we waited for this writer's next great novel? Too many, but don't for a minute think this is anything like the other! This has made the latest list of top 100 best reads in NZ, which is why I include it here. For me personally it would not make that list. Firstly it is very long, very drawn out, and at times I thought it would never end, never be resolved. I had trouble making all the connections with the author's meanderings and musings at the expense of the story. I just wanted him to get on with it! The writing is amazing, if you love reading for the sake of how words are put together and pictures they make then this is for you. If you have the patience to focus on the story, and the relationships between the characters as well, then you will also enjoy this. Briefly, Clay is a teenage boy, one of the 5 Dunbar brothers, ranging in age from 18 down to 11, living alone in suburban Sydney following the death of their mother and desertion by their father. Oldest boy Matthew is the prime narrator, although the story does move back and forth telling the story of each of the parents and the family in its early days. So much love there, and heart ache and sadness. Clay is the son who is determined to somehow fix everything, the physical bridge he builds with his dad also being symbolic of the bridge being built between the boys themselves and with their father. It is outstanding.
So, the wonderful MZ hasn't lost it, as far as I'm concerned, but he nearly did in the first 50 pages.
Please, persist through them, because Zuzak is still uniquely Australian, and still as ever able to transform the everyday into the sacred, routine into legend.
But the first 50 pages or so are a real challenge, and I don't know why he had to do that - they have a fair amount of self conscious artfulness in them, IMHO, and I think the book would be better if he had rewritten the beginning again, when he got to the end.
But the characters are wonderful and steal our hearts, as usual, and the story is secondary but satisfying, and this is one thing that makes it less wonderful than its predecessor, The Book Thief, I think. It's not up there with that Masterpiece, I don't think, but you can hardly blame an author for only having one book of that greatness in him, and perhaps it's making me unjustly hard on him.
Another beautiful book from a wonderful author.
Please, persist through them, because Zuzak is still uniquely Australian, and still as ever able to transform the everyday into the sacred, routine into legend.
But the first 50 pages or so are a real challenge, and I don't know why he had to do that - they have a fair amount of self conscious artfulness in them, IMHO, and I think the book would be better if he had rewritten the beginning again, when he got to the end.
But the characters are wonderful and steal our hearts, as usual, and the story is secondary but satisfying, and this is one thing that makes it less wonderful than its predecessor, The Book Thief, I think. It's not up there with that Masterpiece, I don't think, but you can hardly blame an author for only having one book of that greatness in him, and perhaps it's making me unjustly hard on him.
Another beautiful book from a wonderful author.