From the Lists: #37 The Bridge of San Luis Rey

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) by Thornton Wilder examines faith, the existence of divine intervention, and the lives of five victims lost as a result of an unexpected tragedy.

The novel opens with “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.” The bridge, a local feat of Incan engineering, linked Cuzco with Lima and had lasted 100 years. Adding to the mystery, there was no apparent reason for its collapse. A Franciscan monk, who witnessed the event, believed that if he could discover the facts about the victims’ lives, he could prove whether the tragedy was a result of chance or divine intervention.

The subsequent parts of this very short novel examine the lives of the five victims: A misunderstood member of the Peruvian court and her young servant, a young man in mourning for his recently deceased twin brother, the male valet for Peru’s most acclaimed actress and the actress’s young son.

The novel’s conceit is that the narrator has the benefit of both the monk’s writing as well as the lens of history to clarify portions of the victims’ lives, which may have been misunderstood or misrepresented by those closest to them. For example, the Marquesa de Montemayor is reviled in Lima due to her appearance and penchant for hitting the bottle, yet in time, her letters are revered as some of the most famous literary writings from the period. Through the lens of time, it becomes apparent that all of these victims, except perhaps the children, are a complex mixture of both good and bad qualities – like everyone.

Thornton Wilder from his Yale graduation photo

Besides its brevity, I quite liked this novel. The antiquated and quaint style of storytelling reads as if the book were written in the Victorian age rather than the early 20^th century. The third person narrator proves to be more reliable than the monk – who presumes to be able to know the will of God. And, like Go Tell It On the Mountain, this is another story told in five parts.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 for originality, entertainment, and brevity.

Next up:  #36  All the King’s Men