About this title: Five travelers are killed when a bridge collapses in Peru. A young priest investigates their lives and tells their stories, discovering that each victim suffered from an all-encompassing love that could not, for various reasons, find satisfaction. This was Thornton Wilder's most celebrated novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1927.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: PAPERBACK
Publisher: Penguin
Date Published: 1966
Description: Good. Paperback, Penguin orange/white, lightly toned but otherwise good for age. Your book will be securely packed and promptly dispatched from our UK warehouse. read more
Description: Reader copy; Collectible. MAY 1941 TANNED AT PAGE EDGES. FIRM COVER IS SUNNED ON SPINE. SAME DAY POST ON ORDERS RECEIVED BEFORE 3PM. read more
Edition: 1st Penguin Edition
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Penguin Books, Great Britain
Date Published: 1941
Description: Fair. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall Paperback These books in fair condition are good reading copies. Some may have worn corners, book store stamped inside, small splits at edges, some creases, owners names, old prices and/or minor imperfections. But all are complete...........(We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions etc. ) read more
Description: 12th impression. Good in stained blue cloth with gilt lettering. Front inner hinge loosening. Inscription on the front endpaper. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Date Published: 2000
ISBN-13:9780141184258ISBN:0141184256
Description: Good. This book is in GOOD overall condition. It shows signs of having been read and has general light wear to the cover, spine and pages. read more
Edition: Reprint
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Penguin Books, Great Britain
Date Published: 1942
Description: Fair. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall Paperback These books in fair condition are good reading copies. Some may have worn corners, book store stamped inside, small splits at edges, some creases, owners names, old prices and/or minor imperfections. But all are complete(We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions etc. ) read more
Edition: First Edition 8th Printing
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Penguin, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
Date Published: 1957
Description: Very Good. 4 1/2 " By 7 1/2" Very minor cover edge wear, minor creasing to spine, shelf wear to page edges otherwise No marks or inscriptions to pages. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Longmans, Green and Company
Date Published: 1934
Description: Used-Acceptable. Small inscription inside, pages good. Hardback slightly edgeworn cover. First printed September 1931 by Longmans Green And Co. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780141023625ISBN:0141023627
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780140181913ISBN:0140181911
Description: Good. Page colour-Slightly discoloured in accordance with book age. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
""The Bridge of San Luis Rey" by Thornton Wilder (Product Description)
"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence, Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world.
By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper seeks to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who perished in the tragedy. His study leads to his own death -- and to the author's timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition.
Very interesting book! It follows the lives of the 5 people who were on the bridge that day. The Marquesa De Montemayor and her companion, Pepita, Esteban, Uncle Pio and Don Jaime who was traveling with Uncle Pio. All of their lives are very tragic and they have family troubles with children and husbands. It also seems that at the time of their lives they were all seeking love. Brother Juniper's book about all this is pronounced heretical. The book was ordered to be burned in the square along with it's author, Brother Juniper. I kind of liked this book, I read it pretty fast, but I'm not really fond of Thornton Wilder's writings. This is the second book of his I have read and I didn't care much for either one. But that's my opinon!"
"Wilder, Thornton. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY. (1927). ****. It's been fifty years since I last read this novel, Wilder's second and his first Pulitzer Prize winner. Set in 18th century Peru, the book is a recounting of the researches of Father Juniper who had tried to find some divine reason for the loss of five lives as a bridge collapsed over a gulch in Lima. Juniper's writings were ultimately burned by the Inquisition - as was the dear Father - but one copy of his treatise remained. He researched the lives of each of the five victims, and tried to piece together what that had in common, if anything, that would subject them to such a tragic death. What he found, and what Wilder brings home to us at the end, is that each of the victims was the source of a particularly strong sense of love for another person. Though the type of love expressed was different in each case, it always involved the principal reason for their continued existence. What the author is asking is: "...is the intention that lies behind love sufficient to justify the desperation of living." Although Wilder leaves us to draw our own conclusions, we are provided with more than enough clues to solve the puzzle. Recommended."
"This wasn't what I thought it was going to be. When I read the summary of the novel somewhere I thought the novel was going to be a semi-detective story focusing on Brother Juniper. While I still think that would have been interesting what the novel actually is is so much better. I should have expected it, because it left a impact on me similar to the one I felt when I first read Our Town. Like many have said before me The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a perfect modern fable. Although Wilder had never visited Peru at the time he wrote the novel, I found the narrator's tone to be very appropriate. This may sound silly, but the voice I heard in my head while reading sounded like the narrator from Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Apparently Wilder's publishers were worried that the book wasn't long enough. In fact, the afterwords mentions that the original edition featured very wealthy margins and several pictures, in order to justify the standard price for a novel. However, the length is very precise. Any more would subtract from the impact of the message. The closing sentence of the novel is one of the most beautiful closing passages I have ever encountered. You have probably heard it before, but I won't quote it because it works so well in its proper context. Its a passage that is most effective when the effort is put in to reach it. It's a very short read, but one that will stay with you for a long time."
"Since this book's themes, language and organization have been covered by many other reviewers, I thought I'd consider a different topic: how is the novel affected by its setting, eighteenth-century Peru? (This question is somewhat different from that of why Wilder chose to set his work in colonial South America - as the supplemental materials in this edition explain, the decision mostly stemmed from Wilder's reading of French literature which drew upon the historical figures of La Périchole and the viceroy.) The work's premise - a bridge collapses, five people die, and a priest seeks the reasons for this supposed act of God - is potentially applicable to almost any place or time. How then, does the Peruvian backdrop direct the unfolding of this basic plot?
Perhaps the most central consequence of the novel's setting is the presence of Roman Catholic institutions, not as they actually existed but as they were understood by a twentieth-century North American Protestant. The Inquisition and the nunnery present two contrasting poles in the story, the one lethally hostile to any innovation or challenge, the other an inexhaustible fount of love and charity. Neither portrayal is accurate according to modern understandings, but historical precision is clearly not the goal. Instead, the Inquisition and the nunnery are being used as tropes, evoking a world in which spiritual matters have high stakes. The Inquisition may execute Brother Juniper for investigating the meanings of the deaths, but it does not dare to ignore him. Similarly, the closing words of the book, the meditation of a mother superior, explicitly link worldly expressions of love to a concept of divine grace. In such an environment, the work's central dilemma takes on considerable urgency.
The other major use that Wilder makes of the Peruvian background is to slightly exoticize his characters, portraying them as creatures of heightened emotion and drama. Multiple figures in the book are depicted as tempestuous, ruled by passion, and prioritizing the claims of the heart above those of reason or prudence. Wilder rarely makes overt references to his characters' ethnicity (except when saying that Esteban and Manuel loved "simply, latinly"), but he's again drawing on North American tropes (or stereotypes) about the Iberian world. While the characters are portrayed in far more nuanced terms than is the Inquisition, which gleefully sends victim after victim to the stake, the central personages are still essentially stock figures, vessels for a particular authorial message. The Peru of The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a fairy-tale version of an actual place, its reality heightened and distorted in order to tell a story meant to be universal."
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
rating
