I stopped even reading the titles, and the interesting structure dissolved into the background. In fact, it teaches you to read it so well that by the end of the novel, the sections ceased to have any impact on my reading experience: I simply forgot about them. (He’s said the character is based on his mother.) This should get boring after a while, but somehow it doesn’t it’s amazing how quickly this book teaches you to read it.

It’s as though Connell is simply organizing a series of discrete memories, only they aren’t, and can’t be his. But though many sections-they’re not quite chapters-could stand alone, this doesn’t seem to be the aim. My first thought was that it had to do with the structure, which is admittedly unusual: 117 sections, numbered and titled things like “Sentimental Moment” and “Guest Towels.” At first, it seems like each section might be its own story, in the Lydia Davis style, with impacts ranging from significant to droll to mystifying. Bridge should be so good, especially if like me, you’re officially bored by the broad thematic strokes outlined above. This novel is glorious.īut even as I read, enthralled, once and then a second time, I couldn’t quite figure out why. It only took me about ten pages to realize what an idiot I had been. I finally read it for the first time this year, after what must have been the hundredth recommendation from someone I trusted. It was the 1959 debut novel of a writer I’d never heard of otherwise, a white guy named Evan S. But I was turned off by the cover, which seemed altogether too misty and domestic, an impression that the description did nothing to disabuse: this was a Classic American Novel, a slice-of-life “family story” about a wealthy woman living in Kansas City between the First and Second World Wars. I remember picking up the 50th-anniversary edition from a display of staff picks at McNally-Jackson someone had just been gushing to me about how great it was, and at least one staff member seemed to agree: the suggestion card was crammed with cramped praise.

Evan s connell books