Thornton Wilder’s Bridge of San Luis Rey sat on the TBR pile for several years. I decided just before this spring’s trip to Peru that it would be perfect to read on the plane to Lima. Unfortunately, due to a lack of shelf space, it was buried in a box somewhere in the secret book vault. Some months after returning, I moved cycled several dozen books to new locations and moved Bridge to a more accessible location.
It’s such a brief book, a novella really, that I completed it in only a couple of hours. I’m sure it marks me as uninformed when I report that I was not swept away by Wilder’s work here. The book is divided into vignettes of the key figures killed in a bridge collapse. These profiles purport to be the work of a Franciscan who investigates the lives of the deceased to determine the reason for the deaths. Each of these vignettes is compellingly written and adds ambiguity to the Franciscan’s assumptions about mortality and fate.
Despite the book’s generally high quality, it seems clear to me that Wilder is writing at a remove of time and distance from his subject. Although I learned in the forward that he did not visit Peru until decades after publishing the novel, I suspect that without assistance I’d have concluded he wrote without firsthand knowledge. Of course, the disjunction may result from my own projecting contemporary Lima onto his more colonial setting.
In sum, I do recommend The Bridge of San Luis Rey, though I respectfully dissent from its inclusion by some in the very highest ranks of literature.
