kategci 's review for:

Mr. Bridge by Evan S. Connell

4.0

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I had read Mrs. Bridge 4 years ago, and I wanted to read this companion novel. While I gave Mrs. Bridge 3 stars, the ending has stayed with me and reading this novel, my rating should have been 4 stars. Evan Connell has written a pair of novels set in the 1920s- 1940s, one told from the wife's point of view and this one from her husband's point of view. He is an attorney in Kansas City and part of the upper middle class, although he worries often about his money and seems to be extremely conservative- financially as well as politically and personally. He has a one man law office with one employee, Julia, a spinster who lives with her disabled sister. He thinks it unseemly to discuss his professional life with his wife and three children and as he has no real hobbies or interests (outside of reading several newspapers with a cocktail each evening), the struggle to connect with his family is real. Often late for dinner, he has a tendency to dismiss their problems and concerns. He believes his wife should deal with their children's lives; he is there to give them money and to allow them to borrow the car. The chapters are short and propel you through the story and while Mr. Bridge irritated me with his hyper-conservative views, the author seems to be true to the time and place. It was a perfect, fast summer read (it really did not take me 8 days; I had picked it up and started it and put it aside after 50 pages. I finished it in a day and a half).