Bridge (American Reader

by Robert Thomas

WINNER OF THE 2015 PEN CENTER USA LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION

Set in modern-day San Francisco, this obsessive fiction probes the stormy life of Alice, a passionate and whip-smart young woman who works at a law firm. Alice faces despair and occasional rapture as she struggles with simultaneously real and hallucinated relationships, including a tumultuous romance with her co-worker David, and an escalating war with her supervisor Fran. In lyrical prose, Bridge exposes a raw, brilliant, and furious mind as it treads the jagged terrain of mental illness, murder, and suicide—to be or not to be.

Robert Thomas is the author of Door to Door (2002, Fordham University Press), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as winner of the Poets Out Loud Prize, as well as Dragging the Lake (2006, Carnegie Mellon University Press). He has received a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and won a Pushcart Prize. He lives with his wife in Oakland, California, and works as a legal secretary in San Francisco.

Genres: Fiction

156 pages, Paperback

First published October 14, 2014

Reviews

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Winner of the 2015 PEN Center USA Literary Award for fiction, Bridge is poet Robert Thomas's free-wheeling, raw, and often funny sometimes-prose-poem/novella, told in the first person by Alice. Alice is an opera-, movie-, and officemate-loving word processor in a law office in San Francisco, and the book is her crazed stream-of-consciousness diary, slowly documenting her alternately suicidal and homicidal urges.

Hint: the chapter titles are important. Read them with the same weight as the beautifully written text. Here's a sample from a chapter titled "Red Planet":

The worst torture is one that leaves no mark. Everyone thinks you're overreacting. Everyone thinks your deck was cut by a con man. When someone renders your soul, heating it to the point that it separates from your body like clarified butter . . . Well, we're all clarified now, aren't we?

When someone erases your soul—and when someone steals your parking space, leaving you in tears behind the steering wheel, isn't that exactly what it is? Soul is the lightning you don't see but know exists because you hear the thunder. The ice you know is buried in the rocks of the red planet because you've seen the Viking photos of the ancient river valleys. The blue note plucked on the double bass so low the audience doesn't hear it and thinks their chill comes from the horn alone.

(Quote Loc. 731–734 on the damned library Kindle version where it is very hard to quickly flip back and forth when you've forgotten the chapter title; oh how I hate Kindle. If you're not as cheap as I am and you have shelf space, buy the book. Uh-oh, I think Alice is taking possession of me. Yes, it's happening . . . "I want everyone: the butcher, the baker, the circuit breaker. The pallbearer, the sun starer, the system error to say NO to giving amazon your hard-earned dollars and the publisher and writer of this beautiful little book a mere pittance. Instead, I want Pearl, Burl, and the girl who sat every Monday afternoon for six years on Mrs. Chen's chenille couch waiting for her piano lesson, I want every one of you who's reading this review to buy an honest-to-god tangible book directly from the wonderful nonprofit publisher BOA Editions!")

Phew. Betsy here again. This review writing can open you to some weird shit.

Disclaimer: I don't personally know Robert Thomas or anybody at BOA Editions, and I take no responsibility for any fictional character's ill-advised channeled rant on a site owned by amazonians.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't be misled by the slender size of this book -- it packs more of a wallop in its 150 pages than many novels of much greater length. By turns harrowing and hysterical, Alice's stream of conscious journal opens a psyche of intelligence fraught with conflict and self delusion. But every page holds a gem of insight and poetic lyricism. This book got 5 stars not because the author is a friend, but because it is excellent.

[Lori Ostlund · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED this book, which seemed to somehow bring together all the best qualities of short fiction and poetry as a novel. Highly recommend.

[Dna · Rating 4 out of 5]

The female protagonist is out of her mind, which makes this an intriguing "love" story. This is my first time reading anything by poet Robert Thomas, and the quality of his writing did not disappoint. It wasn't oblique in the way most people think poetry is -- in fact, the novella is very readable, and flows freely. But Thomas is an artist with words. Not a single syllable is wasted.

Please write more novels!

[Sarah Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of the metaphors that undergird this novella are wonderful, so the writing from sentence to sentence can be mesmerizing. I do wish there were more of a story here and that the POV was more consistent. A quick read. http://sarahkennedybooks.com

[Priscilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bridge is one of those (rare) books where I knew from the first page that I would love it. It's the wit and San Francisco references that seduced me. The writing, throughout, is brilliantly witty and very lyrical (no surprise that Thomas is a poet). The first night I only read a page and a half because I knew it was going to be good and I wanted to enjoy it over several days. Loved it, loved it---for the first three-quarters. After that I sped up because the protagonist lost her intrigue for me. Some things don't add up. I don't care about her and never did. Yet--I am so glad I went to the trouble to get my hands on Bridge. The first 100 pages, alone, do it. A sweet, heady affair. I have no regrets.

[David Ruekberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful piece of writing. Even if you don't like poetry, you should try this, as it has a clear narrative through-line. And even if you like poetry but not narrative poetry, you should try this, as Thomas's skill with language will float you through the plot with grace and menace. Yes, menace. It reminded me of my experience reading Crime and Punishment in college, inhabiting the being of Raskolnikov through the entire novel. Reading Bridge same. The whole time I felt I was inhabiting Alice's psyche as she wrestles with love and murder and psyche itself. Not a comfortable place to be always, but if you enjoy being transported and not let down -- and yet not deranged or disappointed -- by the journey or its end, read this.

[Ian Hemming · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't want to use the word "pretentious" but it's hard to find a term that fits quite as well. I will say that I was absolutely entranced by this book, 150 pages flew by in an evening, but there were definitely times when I could imagine the author leaning back in his chair with a big grin on his face thinking about how clever he was. The less obtuse parts are a lot of fun and at least it doesn't overstay its welcome.

[Rebecca Winterer · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It's a gift when someone makes you rethink everything." There are countless times that Robert Thomas does this through his narrator, Alice. His work brought to mind Thomas Bernard and Max Frisch. Bridge is a disruptive work in the best possible way.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

short novel but well worth the read; poetic writing.

[Caroline Igra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas' book has writing of the likes I haven't seen in years. It's so sophisticated and descriptive and spectacularly interesting apart from its purpose to the tale told that it would take a long time to read what otherwise looks like a short tale and actually appreciate every word. He packs quite a wallop into this 150 word story. This is more a work of art, literary art, than story but still manages to take up down down down in the life of the protagonist before...well, I don't want to reveal that. Read it when you have the chance to appreciate the words.

[Robin McLean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pyrotechnic writing, clipped and intense chapters that lead the reader deep into the narrator's crazy genius mind. The tension keeps building as the narrator navigates her own fears and hopelessness and philosophizing, as the tension builds into the last of the 150 pages. I did not know how this writer was going to pull this together for an satisfying ending, but Thomas does. The story resolves in the very last line. Quite a feet. Wonderful.

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written book that has a majorly poetic feel! I loved all the Biblical, historical, and pop-cultural references! The story centers on Alice, a woman living in San Francisco, who is depressed/suicidal/homicidal and feeling unloved and unlovable. The chapters are short, but filled with a depth and beauty of language that make them seem much longer. I confess, I didn't even understand everything in them! But it was a beautiful read!

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a deceptively slim book packed with such complex sentences full of allusions and references that it takes a while to process each little chapter. It took some time for me to realize just how troubled Alice was, and I enjoyed how this unfolded bit by bit. However, it felt like the kind of book you'd read in college and debate the meaning of for hours in class and in a term paper, which is to say, reading it felt like hefty intellectual work.

[Genanne Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning. Robert Thomas is also a poet, and he packs each line of his prose with energy. He’s created an unforgettable protagonist in Alice: brilliant, wounded, funny, and full of humanity. A riveting, poetic page-turner.

[James Hemby · Rating 4 out of 5]

2015 PEN Center award - fiction

[Melena S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and poetic approach to telling a narrative. I enjoyed the metaphors throughout. The story just felt incomplete to me.

[Howard Cruz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled through this at times and it is my belief that was caused by the brilliance of the character: Clearly brilliant with an over-analytical mind of a poet. You can constantly see her overactive mind reduce her issues in life from mole hills to mountains. I felt the book was slow at times but picked upa little over halfway through. It was a decent read.

[Mariam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark but beautifully written. The writing reminds me of Hemingway's in that each word is carefully chosen--it's poetry in prose form. The narrator is a disturbed woman, Alice, working at a law firm as a word processor. She describes her relationship with her coworker David and her supervisor while contemplating suicide.