![]() ![]() Bridge, trapped in her garage as her novel ends. Bridge is a basically plotless novel, but it is not plotless in the way to which we are most used: a man walks around, or lies around, or takes an escalator ride, and thinks about things. A fly caught unawares in amber for eternity is no more immobilized and exposed than Mrs. The raised evening newspaper becomes almost a fire screen to deflect any possible spark of conversation. Bridge recedes more and more into doubt and confusion as her three children and husband become more remote and silent. ![]() With a surgeon's skill Connell cuts away the middle-class security blanket of uniformity to expose the arrested development beneath. Bridge is comprised of over one hundred titled chapters, containing vignettes, an image, a fragment of conversation, an event-all building powerfully toward the completed group portrait of a family, closely knit on the surface but deeply divided beneath by loneliness, boredom, misunderstandings, isolation, sexual longing, and terminal alienation. Connell is expert at sketching the banalities and trivialities of middle-class values, customs, and habits. ![]()
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