Finished reading: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder 📚
Finished reading several weeks ago, in fact. I’m way behind with the change of year.
Anyway, this is an odd little book. I stress the ‘little’ because it’s very short. We’re in Peru. An ancient rope bridge, of Inca origin, collapses one day, killing the five people who were crossing it. A priest, Brother Juniper, witnesses the event and decides to use it to prove God has a plan for humans.
The narrator, however, tells us that Juniper’s eventual vast book on the subject was derided, destroyed, and in any case incomplete. The narrator knows things about the people that Juniper never learned. How the narrator knows these things is never stated — we might assume it’s because the narrator is also the author, though that’s rarely a safe assumption.
That’s the start. The rest of the book consists of the stories of the victims and how they came to be there on that day.
It’s good. Won the Pulitzer.
Books 2024, 25