Bridgeport Bus

by Maureen Howard

Mary Agnes Keely is finally leaving home, ditching her Irish Catholic upbringing, her widowed mother, and the emptiness of small-town life for the chaos of Manhattan. Her journey will alter many Lydia, whose crazed husband is confined at Shay Acres; Stanley, the dreaming commercial artist who brings his eager body to her virginal bed; and a ragtag array of artists and poets. Choosing her own way, Mary Agnes taps hidden resources in a gradual process of creative self-discovery realizing triumphantly that "it was no great sin to be, at last, alone."Stylistically original, laced with Howard's characteristic irony and sharp wit, Bridgeport Bus illustrates why "Maureen Howard belongs on any list of the best American novelist practicing today" (Robie Maccauley, Chicago Sun-Times ).

Genres: Fiction

309 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Maureen Howard is the author of seven novels, including Grace Abounding, Expensive Habits, and Natural History, all of which were nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. 'Facts of Life' is an award-winning autobiography. She is a 1952 Smith College alumnae and has taught at a number of American universities, including Columbia, Princeton, Amherst, and Yale, and was recently awarded the Academy Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel has been sitting on my shelves for some time; it took her passing for me to pick it up, and I’m glad I did. What a wonderful tragicomic writer she was: varied in her approaches (first and third-persons, theater, journal...), free with time (in terms of both decade and pace), playful (wordplayful, surreal-playful), with a mind that constantly amazes. There’s not much in the characters or the plot that would interest me much; this is a form-over-content novel all the way. It’s sad that I waited so long to read Howard; I look forward to reading more.

I think the negative responses to this book had something to do with expectations of a younger Mary McCarthy. There's some of that, but Howard, at least in this novel, is darker and more demanding on the reader.

[Old Man JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story follows Mary Agnes Keely who, at thirty five, still lives with her extremely overbearing and abusive mother in a small town and has never been able to live her own life. She finally musters up the courage to leave her stifled existence and moves to Manhattan where she shares an apartment with Lydia whose husband is committed to an insane asylum. And so she begins to live her own life but it is still a chaotic dysfunctional life. The book is very well written with humor and wit but, often, drifted off into places that left me confused and unable to grasp exactly what was going on.

[Betsy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this book a couple of weeks ago. I looked for it after reading the author's obituary and also the title--the author and I having both been born in Bridgeport. I first read her memoir, and saw other ties to my mother's life, as described in my review of it.
I enjoyed this book very much, excluding the section that she wrote in the form of a play. That is the one part of this quote by another reader with which I disagree. "What a wonderful tragicomic writer she was: varied in her approaches (first and third-persons, theater, journal...), free with time (in terms of both decade and pace), playful (word-playful, surreal-playful), with a mind that constantly amazes". That section might get 3 stars from me, but writing in play form in the midst of a novel was a bit too creative for me.
First the title: I predicted to my sibs that the bus must be one from Bridgeport to Manhattan. Not quite: she disguises it, but I think the main character was from Waterbury, CT, on the Naugatuck River, the main tributary of the Housatonic. The bus goes the Bridgeport from where one chooses to go to Boston or Manhattan.
Deciding in her 30s to escape the confines of her native town and especially her mother, Mary Agnes chooses Manhattan. She gets a job in publishing, has some romance including a rather long relationship with an artist she works with, and then finds herself pregnant by a younger man who was a strange diversion for her. From there . . .
I used to dream in my teens of living in Manhattan, in fact wrote a short story in 7th grade about a woman living that life, and as we drove through it on the way to Grandma's house in Bridgeport would start at the apartment buildings overlooking the rivers and imagine my life. So I naturally was entranced by the story of one woman who did so.

[Veena · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book because it presented itself as a tale of a single, independant woman in the 1960s who decides to take control of her life and move to New York. And while it was enjoyable to start with, Bridgeport Bus disappointed me because it ended up being contrite - instead of taking control of her life, Mary Agnes ended up pregnant and in a convent. I'm not sure if this book was supposed to scare young women to lead conventional lives because "independent" woman end up alone and miserable, and maybe that was the fate of most women who didn't marry in that era, but I wanted something more feminist. I can't tell if Bridgeport Bus represents the plight of women in the 1960s, or if it gives up on trying to defend the feminist spirit.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I know what she is thinking, from one or two words spilled like pearls from a broken strand: I know she is dreaming of a vine-covered cottage, woolly dogs, drinks before dinner. It's more to be pitied than my wild shenanigans, for she is being courted by a deranged man who sliced her up, and now wonders if she hasn't been wrong emasculating our fairy tales, because sometimes even the most wicked old witch eating up the sweetest child-meat regurgitates at happy-ending time to make it the happiest time of all" (220).

"I drew away from him. His touch was dishonest. Here in this house he had preserved himself in a hostile silence, an insulting blindness to things. The heart clogs when it no longer answers the simple questions: 'You like this purse? These shoes? How about these curtains? This Plexiglas chandelier-cum-spinning wheel? And when she comes on in those lame pants? Wasn't she a riot? Isn't he a scream?' The heart grinds like an old motor stiff with sludge--the deceptive kindness of another bitter word unsaid. Helen and her mother lived here, sponged the tables, plugged in the Last Supper, washed the chenille pussycats who frolicked on the toilet tank. They kept it all going. The girl with her pretentions to youth and beauty, the old woman with thick rheumatic knuckles. A little color, a little life--nuts to dowdy aprons and dim good taste. I don't blame Stanley. All my fruitless tight-mouthed years back home: we live any way we can; but the heart is apt to conk out and leave us stranded forever. And why *would* Stanley want to touch me in my fatuous Sunday clothes?" (247).