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hulaspots 's review for:
The Bridge on the Drina
by Ivo Andrić
A story that spans hundreds of years, from the construction to the destruction of the eponymous Bridge on the Drina. The story is truly epic is scope and follows the lives of a handful of people throughout the centuries, every chapter almost acting like a short story or narrative following someones life in relation to the bridge, or the town of Visegrad.
I enjoyed the small bits of story and narrative, but also it strangely while character was the focus it also at the same time seemed to take a back seat. There seemed to be a concious effort to write as little dialogue as possible, which made many pages just a wall of description and exposition and the lives of the characters were less explored in a naturalistic way of discovery and more recited.
There was a section of the book where the mini stories did seem so disparate and unrelated that it was like watching standalone episodes in a TV show but I loved how especially in the end a lot of the threads and characters started to come together one way or another, either historically or physically as the novel reaches it's catastrophic ending.
There was always an omen of darkness and forboding centered around the bridge, from suicides, to public impalements and even deals with the devil, and it's darkness seemed to infest and change the town, as things grew and changed. I have never seen a book try and capture the narrative of a single town over hundreds of years. The city of Visegrad and the bridge are the true main characters, and the named characters are just the conduits for misfortune to spread.
A wonderful book if you can deal with pages and pages of no dialogue, though even for me who has built up a tolerance the walls of text became wearisome at times.
I enjoyed the small bits of story and narrative, but also it strangely while character was the focus it also at the same time seemed to take a back seat. There seemed to be a concious effort to write as little dialogue as possible, which made many pages just a wall of description and exposition and the lives of the characters were less explored in a naturalistic way of discovery and more recited.
There was a section of the book where the mini stories did seem so disparate and unrelated that it was like watching standalone episodes in a TV show but I loved how especially in the end a lot of the threads and characters started to come together one way or another, either historically or physically as the novel reaches it's catastrophic ending.
There was always an omen of darkness and forboding centered around the bridge, from suicides, to public impalements and even deals with the devil, and it's darkness seemed to infest and change the town, as things grew and changed. I have never seen a book try and capture the narrative of a single town over hundreds of years. The city of Visegrad and the bridge are the true main characters, and the named characters are just the conduits for misfortune to spread.
A wonderful book if you can deal with pages and pages of no dialogue, though even for me who has built up a tolerance the walls of text became wearisome at times.