Flipping Through Pages #26 - Bridge of Clay (A Book Review)

“When you wait you start feeling deserved.”

There is a personal story etched into this book. And it contains me, Zusak and the Dunbar family.

The core theme that cuts across everything is patience. Patience for forgiveness, for clarity and above all – for each other.

In the midst of all this is Clay Dunbar and the bridge that was to be made.

But I am getting ahead of myself. With the Book Thief, Zusak managed to create a space in my heart for his work – and that culminated in me going for my first ever author meetup with like-minded friends in the city.

It was an experience.

I heard him mention his struggles writing this book – almost his magnum opus in a sense that requires hindsight after a long career. And the celebration that it is finally here, in completion.

When you take the core idea of the book, to show how family can survive adversity – it’s a noble one. And done right it can elevate something cookie cutter to a truly transformational experience. Given the author brings in certain autobiographical elements of his own life, it takes an existence of its own through induction of both the old and the new.

And it’s wonderfully rich in characters, especially the absent but not truly gone Peggy Dunbar.

Her story of success and failure and the legacy she leaves behind for her children is beautifully tragic, and it’s something that makes Clay, who is otherwise a bit bland, into the catalyst for this novel’s progression.

But it’s Clay who proves the most difficult to care for. Stripped of any agency, Zusak fails to render him as more than plot device, even when it comes to personal stakes near the end of the novel. He almost seems like an abstract, an idea that other characters including the narrator get to play around with to reach from one point to another.

It’s sad that despite having such a rich cast, the author fails to create a sense of world building that doesn’t feel hemmed in or breaking the flow of the novel. Creating something this vast is impressive, but just like a poorly constructed bridge – it will only be on show as a spectacle till the time an oppressive element comes along and destroys it completely.

And that is what gets this novel into problematic avenues. As a one page idea, it’s golden. But the more and more it delves into the plot at the expense of it’s characters, prioritizing the wrong ones (which is something I heard cause him confusion as well during the writing phase) and hiding the truly golden eggs – it creates an experience that leaves one more aghast with what has been lost than what was gained.

By the end, everyone is successful through with bittersweet memories. All’s well that end’s well?

Not quite.

So, I give it 4 out of 10.

+A rich cast

+Brilliant themes explored

-The protagonist is bland and underdeveloped

-Some characters feel overexposed while others are underexposed

-The ending is convoluted with no real build up

-The flow of the novel breaks up too often