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A review by emilyconstance
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
5.0
As Russell Banks states in his introduction: "We eventually learn, of course, that those five lives were not at all what they at first seemed to have been. They are a complex, engaging, all-too-human mix of characters...in time we learn that there is more, much more, to [their characters]...As, one hopes, would be the case for any of us: if our secret lives were sufficiently examined and known, we would not seem better or worse than first thought; only more complex and mysterious."
"The novel lives on...because it celebrates our conflicted, contradictory, eternal human nature, our essential humanity. We are the only species that does not know it's own nature naturally and with each new generation has to be shown it anew." And that nature, as Wilder puts it, is merely to love and be loved. There is no need for memory, for keeping score, for weighing vice against virtue...Our nature, the meaning of our existence, is to love. It's enough.
"The novel lives on...because it celebrates our conflicted, contradictory, eternal human nature, our essential humanity. We are the only species that does not know it's own nature naturally and with each new generation has to be shown it anew." And that nature, as Wilder puts it, is merely to love and be loved. There is no need for memory, for keeping score, for weighing vice against virtue...Our nature, the meaning of our existence, is to love. It's enough.