Bridge of Clay

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Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls / The Origin of Me by Bernard Gallate / Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon / Cloudstreet by Tim Winton / Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey About the Author, Markus Zusak This is the first time in a while that I've actually not finished a book. I should mention that I was one of the few people who liked but didn't love The Book Thief, but I find it hard to believe that Bridge of Clay will be as well-loved as that book. More power to you if you can actually finish and enjoy it. Beautifully written and thought-provoking, Bridge of Clay will tug at your heartstrings; and at the essential core of the novel is the delightfully uplifting message that life tends to find a way to make things right in the end.” — New York Journal of Books I have a customer that comes into work every Thursday. His name is Doug and we bonded over Markus Zusak and over the last eight months we've become really great friends. I lent him copy of this book to read and he left little notes throughout it and it's a copy I will treasure forever. And soon we're going to go and meet Markus Zusak at a book event and we're so excited. These books have changed my life and they've also introduced wonderful people to me too. In a complex narrative that leaps through time and place and across oceans, Zusak paints a vivid portrait of the brothers trying to regain their balance by keeping their family’s story alive.”— Time

Epic new novel from The Book Thief author Markus Zusak to be published by Transworld". Penguin. 13 March 2018 . Retrieved 19 February 2019. First of all I must say reading this book is hard work. It is a history of a family presented like a patchwork quilt - a bit here and a bit there, jumping around from person to person, place to place and past to present. Concentration is the key. This is a story about family and the narratives that underlie them. The idea of personal history forms such a central part of the plot and the novel’s structure. The chronology of Bridge of Clay drifts around, from the story of Penelope – the Dunbar’s mother – to the history of Michael – their father – to Matthew’s present-day writing of the narrative, to the eleven years earlier that Clay left school to help ‘the Murderer’ build his bridge. It is an expansive story and, admittedly, the elliptical nature of the various revelations and histories can be a little tough to follow in places. However, this is something that Zusak pursued consciously: “You have to do a bit more work but I think the rewards are greater, too” ( Entertainment Weekly). For me, the payoff is most definitely worth the patience required as the various narrative threads come together. I ended up loving every single one of these characters: Matthew: the protector, Rory: the fighter, Henry: the charmer, Clay: the runner and, Tommy: the boy with his legion of animals. I even fell in love with the murderer, with Penny, and everything they go through.

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Clay’s decision to join his father is seen by the rest of the family as an unforgivable betrayal, while the building of the bridge is subject to delays, which along with digressions account for much of the book’s length: “What the hell was he waiting for? When would they start building? Was this bridge procrastination?” It seems clear, however, that the actual construction project is secondary to Zusak’s elaboration of an overarching metaphor; as the bridge not only reconnects a broken family, but also provides a link to the loss of the boys’ mother, Penelope, to cancer. All in all, this book was a very unique journey. I loved it. I gave it 4 stars because of the hard start, and some parts of the book that were too slow (like the horse racing part).

The crisp imagery of the prose descriptions is undermined by the self-congratulatory end-rhyming of the final two sentences. Zusak’s rhyming, here, is emblematic of a more general tendency to break every narrative into small paragraphs or sections, and to end each of these with an apparently telling or teasing line: “Until now”; “We loved what you did next”; “In months ahead, she would push too soon.” This sense of trying to intrigue the reader, to draw them through the narrative, begins to feel like a prolonged delay of information, and risks losing us before the stories of Zusak’s novel begin to fall into place. So there’s not much more I can say. There isn't a regular plot with things happening and people dying. En esta novela conocemos la historia de 'Clay Dunbar', el silencioso, el chico con demasiado corazón. Uno de cinco hermanos inadaptados, el corredor incansable, imparable, una inmovible fuerza de la naturaleza. Entrenando fuera de cualquier sentido, sin descanso, desconociendo, y de alguna manera consciente, de un fatídico día por llegar. El día de ajustar cuentas.

Bridge of Clay

In the two decades of his writing process, Zusak went through several changes and challenges with the novel. He stated in an interview with Publishers Weekly that the most difficult problem was finding the right narrator, and giving that narrator the right voice. For six years a character named Maggie was the narrator of the novel, but upon revision was completely scrapped. His breakthrough of the book came when he first decided to quit the book—wherein he realised that he would not have been happy if he had done so, and "just had to finish it". [9] you know that one book that makes zero sense 99% of the time and then you read one line and it all hits you and you're like WOW THIS IS AN INCREDIBLY CRAFTED MASTERPIECE? Matthew Dunbar – the oldest Dunbar boy, and narrator of the book. As the oldest brother, responsibility to take care of the family fell to him once their father left. I adored Markus Zusak’s modern classic The Book Thief. Its subject matter will hopefully never be repeated. And that novel’s mastery, it’s knife-edge balance of whimsy and gravitas was never going to be repeated. So the comparisons should, and in my review will stop there. The right ideas are usually buried beneath several wrong ideas first – and those wrong ideas can take months, sometimes years to get through – but in that time you accrue what you need for when the right ideas come together. In this case, I stumbled over the thought of a boy building a bridge when I was nineteen or twenty years old – but I had a lot of growing up to do, both as a person and a writer – before I was able to write it. I tried, of course. I even finished a version of BRIDGE OF CLAY that I didn’t send off to attempt publication. I was a long way from having anything published at that stage – but I knew even then that the version I’d written wasn’t the right one…I didn’t know it would be another twenty three years before I’d get there.

i'm REALLY big on books with themes of family and while that was the MAIN topic of the book, i couldn't even connect with the boys (i'll admit some parts were funny but they were too few and far between) bc THE WRITING WAS ALL OVER THE PLACE and so when i die and they open me up, and they see this story engraved on my heart, they will know how a boy named clay changed me, too. Michael Dunbar – father of the Dunbar boys, often referred to as 'the murderer', his story is one of the main plot lines throughout the work.Markus Zusak is my all time favourite author and with Bridge of Clay he has just solidified that position further. I fell in love with his writing in The Book Thief and then The Messenger and now with Bridge of Clay. I always tell people that going into his book, don't expect them to be anything alike (except for extraordinary writing) because they are all so individual and different from each other, it's actually kind of amazing. Tommy Dunbar – the fifth and youngest Dunbar boy. Characterised by his love for animals and the works of Homer, which is shown through the names of the family pets; Agamemnon (the fish), Hector (the cat), Achilles (the mule) and Telemachus (the budgie). As we learn of life before the five Dunbar boys were born; of Michael’s early life, and Penny’s as well, we get to know their individual likes and dislikes; their hopes for the future. It was Penny who said she’d like five children, but Michael who said, let them not all be boys! In March 2016, Zusak talked about his unfinished novel Bridge of Clay. He stated that the book was 90% finished but that, "... I'm a completely different person than the person who wrote The Book Thief. And this is also the scary thing—I'm a different person to the one who started Bridge of Clay eight, nine years ago ... I've got to get it done this year, or else I'll probably finally have to set it aside." [8] Markus Zusak is the bestselling author of six novels, including The Book Thief and The Messenger. His books have been translated into more than forty languages, to both popular and critical acclaim. He lives in Sydney with his wife and two children.

I'm writing a book called Bridge of Clay—about a boy building a bridge and wanting it to be perfect. He wants to achieve greatness with this bridge, and the question is whether it will survive when the river floods. That's all I can say about it for now—not out of secrecy, but you just don't know what direction a book is going to take, no matter how well you've planned. So, does it deliver? Yes, in spades. Zusak has crafted a strapping story about love, family, courage, betrayal and guilt...a great novel, rich with meaning, and one that will endure.' Australian Book Reviewi feel like this could have been a really well written book if we were just given some structure but it just felt so disorganized and haphazard and i couldnt grasp at anything at all so im pretty sure that even an infinite combination of words will spectacularly fail in describing what this story means to me, because it has been nearly 12 hours since i finished reading this and i still am at a loss at how to convey the heartbreaking beauty of this book. With heft and historical scope, Zusak creates a sensitively rendered tale of loss, grief, and guilt’s manifestations.”— Publishers Weekly,starred review The narrative voice and framing is unusual, and often oblique. Many readers have found that confusing, but I found it beguiling — I trusted the author and so was both a willing audience and participant — eager to marvel in the colour, intensity and heart imbued in the commonplace and accepting of the challenge being presented. And one should not underestimate the challenge, patience is required. Poetic prose a b c Grochowski, Sara (2 October 2018). "A Conversation with Markus Zusak". Publishers Weekly . Retrieved 5 March 2019.