The Invisible Bridge

 

The Invisible Bridge

by Julie Orringer

★★★★

 

This big yawning novel starts with a simple, young Jewish man named Andras. He’s an aspiring architect from Hungary, who moves to Paris to study. From there we meet Klara and the two begin a tumultuous affair. That covers a tiny splice of the beginning of the novel. After that it’s an exploration of Europe in the 1930s and ‘40s. We see the Germans rise to power, the change in attitude towards the Jewish community across the continent, the other people who are persecuted, etc. It reminded me in a lot of ways of Birdsong, another book that begins with a love story but quickly escalates into an exploration of war and its dehumanizing effect.

 

Andras and Klara’s romance is certainly central to the whole book, but life gets in the way of their little world. Their troubles and Klara’s past seem so unimportant in the larger scheme of things. As signs of war start building all around them, their options begin to disappear. They realize that whatever happens, if they can stay together they will be alright. Unfortunately, that’s not always possible when your country is at war.

 

It really feels like two very different books. One tells the story of an ambitious man who falls in love with an older woman. The other is about a Jewish man trying to survive the horrors of World War II in Budapest. Both books are beautiful, but by the end of the novel it’s hard to even recognize the characters you met at the beginning. I suppose that realistically that’s exactly what war does to people. It strips away the things that make them who they are and turns them into something harder. This book shows that transformation in heartbreaking way.

 

BOTTOM LINE: At times I felt like I couldn’t see the trees for the forest. The writing is beautiful, the story is powerful, but there’s just so much there that it’s easy to get a bit lost. I still loved reading it and would highly recommend it to anyone who loves WWII stories.

 

“Her starfish pin glittered like a beautiful mistake, a festive scrap torn from an ocean-liner ball, blown across the sea and caught by chance in the dark waves of her hair.”

 

“The scent of it blew through the channel of the Seine like the perfume of a girl on the threshold of a party. Her foot in its satin shoe had not yet crossed the sill, but everyone knew she was there. In another moment she would enter. All of Paris seemed to hold its breath, waiting.”

 

“I wouldn’t trade your complication for anyone else’s simplicity.”

 

“Strange that war could lead you involuntarily to forgive a person who didn’t deserve forgiveness, just as it might make you kill a man you didn’t hate.”

 

Birdsong Readalong: Final Post

I want to discuss the novel, so there will be SPOILERS as I summarize the second half of the book.

Birdsong

by Sebastian Faulks

★★★★☆

Where to begin? Let’s catch up on the rest of the book first.

Part Three: England 1978

We travel forward to the ‘70s where we meet Stephen’s granddaughter, Elizabeth Benson, a successful business woman embroiled in an affair with a married man. She begins to research her grandfather’s time in World War I after finding some of his journals.  

Part Four: France 1917:

Back in France we see Stephen return to the small town where he met Isabelle. While there he stumbles across her sister Jeanne and then eventually meets up with Isabelle. She is both physically and emotionally changed; scarred by the war and in love with another man. Stephen soon finds himself corresponding with Jeanne after saying his goodbyes with Isabelle.

Back at the front Weir is once again terrified of what the future will bring. In one scene he tries to say a preemptive goodbye to Stephen in case anything should happen to them and Stephen rebuffs him. Stephen is so cold and dismissive, but he obviously acts that way because he can’t stand the thought of losing someone else he loves. Weir is killed before Stephen can apologize.

Part Five: England 1978-79:

We’re back with Elizabeth as she learns about WW I. A few blind dates, attempts to break Stephen’s journaling code and then an unexpected pregnancy leave her life in turmoil.

Part Six: France 1918

Our finally section with Stephen is so painful to read I could hardly stand it. He and Jack Firebrace find themselves trapped underground after a regular inspection of the tunnels goes awry. The two men take solace in each other, talking about their lives and their loves as they try to dig their way out. Then Jack dies and once again my heart broke. Stephen is found by German soldiers who are grieving the loss of their own men and in that moment it doesn’t matter what color their uniforms are, they are brothers in grief.

Part Seven: England 1979

Elisabeth, pregnant with her child, learns the truth behind her mother’s parentage. She is the daughter of Stephen and Isabelle, but was raised by Stephen and Jeanne. When Elizabeth has her baby, naming him John after her Jack Firebrace’s son who died too young, she brings the story full circle, new life balancing death.

My Thoughts:

The final few chapters are so intense. The whole book feels like it lopes along at a steady pace, then in those final 100 pages there is just such an overwhelming feeling of both joy and sorrow. There’s a constant give and take: Stephen lives, but Jack dies, Elizabeth has a baby, but Jack looses his son. The balance of the destruction and devastation of war is pitted against the enduring nature of love, especially that between a parent and a child. I've never read something that pairs the two so beautifully.

It's not a light read, but it is enthralling. About 3/4 of the way in I wasn't sure how I felt about the book, I really wasn’t loving it, but that final section just moved me. I felt the loss of Weir and Firebrace deeply and my heart went out to Stephen who will always struggle with the guilt of surviving.

In my opinion this book will probably elicit a strong response from anyone who reads it. I think many people would hate it. It’s too slow-going in the beginning, it drastically changes format, from a love story to a war story, there are some unnecessary characters (like that guy Elizabeth was sort of dating in Part Five), there are descriptions of sex that are distasteful at best, etc. And while all of those things affected my reading experience, the thing that I walked away with in the end was an incredibly powerful picture of trench life in WWI and the lifelong impact of friendships born during wartime. The desperation and fear of the men being overwhelmed by their bravery in the crucial moment, the neglect of later generations to learn about and appreciate all that was done for them by soldiers who fought for their country; that is what I will remember.  

BOTTOM LINE: It is a flawed novel, but one that left me reeling with its realistic portrayal of war. It is one of very few war novels that I can say impacted me deeply on an emotional level. Don’t expect perfection, but try it if it sounds interesting to you.  

“A sense of interest was beginning to penetrate the blankness of his grief; it was like the first, painful sensations of blood returning to a numbed limb.”

Here are a few other reviews, both positive and negative, of the book:

Devouring Texts

Shelf Love

Farm Lane Books Blog

Necromancy Never Pays

When you post your final thoughts leave a link in the comments and I’ll add them to this list. 

p.s. I watched the Masterpiece mini-series of Birdsong and it was actually pretty good. They mixed everything together, so instead of getting the story in chunks, we saw much of it through flashbacks, but it worked. They also introduced Jeanne much sooner and tok the character of Elizabeth out entirely, but I think it worked pretty well.

Birdsong Readalong: Mid-Way Point

Part One: France 1910 

 

Stephen, a young English man, travels to France for business. He stays with Azaire and his family while he complete his work. He soon finds himself falling for Azaire's young second wife Isabelle. She is a few years older than Stephen and the two soon embark on an affair.

We learn that Azaire is cruel to his wife and Stephen had a horrible childhood and was left with no guardian or caretaker for much of his youth. Also, he's got a serious fear of birds, which judging by the title I think might be a bit of foreshadowing. 

So Isabelle and Stephen decide to run away together. Leaving her husband and step-children, the two lovers begin a life together in France. Stephen works during the day and, though still in love, they grow a bit distant as the adjust to their new circumstances. 

Isabelle, struggling with her guilt over their affair and he fear that she will have a miscarriage, leaves Stephen to go live with her sister Jeanne. That's where we leave the tragic couple. 

Part Two: France 1916

 

Six year later and we are in the midst of World War I now. My first thoughts, where is Stephen, where's Isabelle? Did she have the baby? But I think we'll have to wait awhile for those answers.

We meet Jack Firebrace, a tunneler working for the English. We do soon meet Stephen again, but he's a cold officer in the army. We see Stephen get injured and then dumped with the corpses. Oh my gosh that was a chilling scene! Stephen is terrified of abandonment and so these moments, when he thinks he is about to die, bring that fear into a sharp focus.

“He would die without ever having been loved, not once, not by anyone who had known him. He would die alone and unmourned. He could not forgive them – his mother or Isabelle or the man who had promised to be a father.”

He slowly recovers and we get a horrifying glimpse of other injured soldiers in the hospital. He and his friend Michael Weir are reunited behind the lines when Stephen reuses to take the leave offered to him. We also learn more about Firebrace and tragically about the death of his young son. I was surprised by how heartbroken I was for him. He is surrounded by death and yet it’s miles away, safe in England, where tragedy strikes his family.

The scenes on the battlefield were simply terrifying. I haven’t read another book that showed World War I in such a vivid and frightening way. I’d never thought before of how scary it must have been for the soldiers to come up against tanks and machine guns. These were often quiet farmers and machine warfare was a completely new concept.

“He watched the men harden to the mechanical slaughter. There seemed to him a great breach of nature which no one had the power to stop.”

Now that I’ve finally made it through the first half I’m loving it! I think it’s interesting that each new section introduces us to a new cast of characters and a very different setting. I can’t wait to see where the story takes us next! We’ll wrap up on April 30^th.

Do you like our main two characters? Do you think they made the right decision to run away together?

 

Birdsong Readalong Beings!

The Birdsong Readalong starts today! Pop in with comments or tweets at #BirdsongAlong and post when you want to. This is a low maintenance readalong. Hope you'll join in!

READING SCHEDULE:

Pages 1-230 (Part 1 and 2) by Monday, April 15th

Pages 231-483 by Tuesday, April 30th

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Birdsong Readalong

Looking for something to read in April? Join the fun. As part of The Classics Club’s April Event Theme, (read about WWI, WWII or the Vietnam War), I’m hosting a readalong of Birdsong.

Published in 1993 Sebastian Faulk’s World War I novel begins in 1910 and finishes in 1979. It’s 483 pages long, so not too daunting, and is split into seven sections. Though it’s not centuries old, the novel quickly became a classic and is also in 1001 Book to Read Before You Die. It was #13 in the BBC’s Big Read survey for Britain's favorite book. It has been adapted for the stage and radio and was turned into a Masterpiece miniseries in 2012.

It’s got love, it’s got war and it’s not as long as War & Peace; what more could you ask for?

We’ll start on April 1st, no post needed to join in the fun. We will touch base on Monday, April 15th and share our comments on the first half of the book. You can do your on post or just join the conversation here at my blog. Then we can all post our final thoughts on Tuesday, April 30th.

READING SCHEDULE:

Pages 1-230 (Part 1 and 2) by Monday, April 15th

Pages 231-483 by Tuesday, April 30th

We can also tweet our thoughts as we go at #BirdsongAlong. So let me know in the comments if you want to read along with me!

Image from here. 

Top Ten Books On My Spring 2013 TBR list!

This week's Top Ten from The Broke and the Bookish asks for my Top Ten Books on My Spring 2013 TBR list. I have books I need to read for my book club and other book blogging events I’m participating in, so I’ll have a very busy spring! I’m also hosting a readalong of Birdsong for the Classics Club’s April theme: reading about war.

  

1) State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (Book Club Pick)

2) Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare (Let’s Read Plays)

3) Birdsong by Sebastian C. Faulks (April Readalong)

4) The Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway (A Modern March)

5) 1776 by David McCullough (TBR Challenge)

6) The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin (Book Club Pick)

7) The White Masai by Corinne Hofmann (Book Club Pick)

8) Oresteia by Aeschylus (Let’s Read Plays)

9) Requiem by Lauren Oliver (Comes out this month!)

10) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams (Let’s Read Plays)

Image from here.