MRS. BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS

Retro Book Pick for September:

Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
(Shoemaker & Hoard, $14)

Originally published in 1959, Evan S. Connell's phenomenal portrait of a Kansas City woman was one-half of the inspiration for the 1990 Merchant Ivory film Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (Connell published Mr. Bridge in 1969). Set in the 1930s and 1940s, the novel details the rather ordinary day to day adventures of the emotionally stifled matriarch of a well-to-do family. Constantly kowtowing to her kind but repressive husband, she leads a socially and politically conservative life that deflates her spirit to the point that her life becomes a positively Thoreauvian example of quiet desperation.
Mrs. Bridge is a short novel that deserves to be read very slowly because the writing is deceptively simple. You could read the book in a flash, but you'd miss out on the interwoven themes and much of Connell's subtle, dry humor. Considering its slim size, the book contains a whopping 117 chapters, many of which are less than a page long. We read about Mrs. Bridge's loving but strained relationships with her three children, her close friendship with a mentally unstable woman named Grace and her trip to Europe with Mr. Bridge on the eve of World War II.
Calling Connell's masterpiece by the plain old term "novel" seems insufficient. More accurately speaking this is a mosaic in which dozens of individually stunning passages come together to form an even more breathtaking final product.