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A review by ehays84
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
4.0
I am gradually trying to read more Pulitzer Prize winners, so that was one reason I picked this up. It is also on the shorter side, and I was kind of in between longer reads, so this worked well. I also was intrigued by the setup and questions posed by this novel. And finally, I loved Our Town in high school, but had never read anything else by Wilder, which I had to remedy since he is certainly one of the greatest ever American authors.
I will start at the end. I can see why this quote has lived on and been used at countless funerals and memorials of tragedies.
“Even now…almost no one remembers Esteban and Pepita, but myself. Camila alone remembers her Uncle Pio and her son; this woman, her mother. But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love.”
The message of the book can be contained into those memorable lines, and this is about as well as anyone could do trying to answer the question, "why do tragedies happen in a seemingly random way to seemingly random people?"
I found the writing to be beautiful. I found the characters to be very well drawn. I found their stories often heart-breakingly beautiful. But the part that fell flat for me was the idea of the priest researching them and trying to use the research to prove God has a purpose behind these things. I like the idea of that, but I don't think Wilder really carried that out. I think he ended up just telling their stories without the need of the priest, but then bringing the priest in here and there. I just thought that could have been worked in better.
Anyway, I can definitely see why this won the Pulitzer Prize, why it cemented Wilder's legacy, and why the book has lived on in the literary ether. We are almost to its 100th anniversary which is hard to believe. It's interesting that so many of the greatest American authors and books came out of the 1920s. Many wiser heads that mine have speculated on that, but I think people in that time had seen a lot of tragedy and were also dealing with a lot of change all at once. Those factors I believe created a sort of literary primordial ooze out of which great literature could spring. And spring it did.
I will start at the end. I can see why this quote has lived on and been used at countless funerals and memorials of tragedies.
“Even now…almost no one remembers Esteban and Pepita, but myself. Camila alone remembers her Uncle Pio and her son; this woman, her mother. But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love.”
The message of the book can be contained into those memorable lines, and this is about as well as anyone could do trying to answer the question, "why do tragedies happen in a seemingly random way to seemingly random people?"
I found the writing to be beautiful. I found the characters to be very well drawn. I found their stories often heart-breakingly beautiful. But the part that fell flat for me was the idea of the priest researching them and trying to use the research to prove God has a purpose behind these things. I like the idea of that, but I don't think Wilder really carried that out. I think he ended up just telling their stories without the need of the priest, but then bringing the priest in here and there. I just thought that could have been worked in better.
Anyway, I can definitely see why this won the Pulitzer Prize, why it cemented Wilder's legacy, and why the book has lived on in the literary ether. We are almost to its 100th anniversary which is hard to believe. It's interesting that so many of the greatest American authors and books came out of the 1920s. Many wiser heads that mine have speculated on that, but I think people in that time had seen a lot of tragedy and were also dealing with a lot of change all at once. Those factors I believe created a sort of literary primordial ooze out of which great literature could spring. And spring it did.