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: Hardcover
Publisher: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., London
Date Published: 1927
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. [l-viii] p., 1 l., 3-139 [1] p., 2 l. 20 cm. First English trade edition. According to Johnson, the first English trade edition was issued a few days before the first American trade edition. Bound in dark blue cloth; stamped in gold and blind; top edges read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Avon Books
Date Published: 1976
ISBN-13:9780380005895ISBN:0380005891
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Reading crease, spine has some creasing, lite tanning, min chipped edging, name on first page, third page and across right edge, inside pages are clean and clear w lite tanning. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Washington Square Press
Date Published: 1962
Description: Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Nice soft cover, lightly read, some shelf wear to cover, pages yellowed, small hole in top of pages, stk #2407sl7. 117 p. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Time incorporated
Date Published: 1963
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Soft-cover. Light 'tanning'. Spine NOT creased. NO stains, tears, writing. Soft-covere. 139 p. Time reading program special edition.. read more
Description: Very Good. 006091341X Great condition Soft Cover book, clean pages, mild creases to spine, light edge/corner rubs, this book is GREAT! Shop & Save With US. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Avon Books
Date Published: 1976
ISBN-13:9780380005895ISBN:0380005891
Description: Fair. No Jacket. Back Cover Soiled, Sticker Back Cover, Water Lines On Spine, Front Cover Creased, Edges Worn, Interior Tanned, Interior Unmarked, Reading Copy. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 1986
ISBN-13:9780060913410ISBN:006091341X
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Highlighting/underlining. UNDERLINING IN BOOK. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 148 p. Perennial Classics. Audience: General/trade. UNDERLINING IN BOOK-The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Perennial Classics). f-Wilder, Thornton, soft cover. Dimensions (in inches): 0.50 x 7.80 x 5.30. Harper Perennial, 1986. 18th Century; Accidents; Bridges; Classics; Fiction; History; Literary; Peru; Study Aids; Study Guides. mails quickly read more
Description: Good in Unknown jacket. Good to Very Good # PL-36. Tight, uncreased spine, some cover wear and no markings. Lightly tanning pages and some foxing spots on the cover. Fiction (#50007) read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Time incorporated
Date Published: 1963
Description: Very good. No dust jacket. For its age, remarkable. Tight, bright, clean. Minor edgewear/chips. Time reading program special edition.. read more
Binding: Perfect Bound Paper
Publisher: Washington Square Press
Date Published: 1961
Description: Good + to Very Good- Mass Market Paperback. 16mo-over 5¾"-6¾" tall. Light wear. PON on FEP. Couple pages have mild water stains. Ink smudge bottom foredge. Binding tight, pages clean. (Store Display-Gen Fic) read more
Binding: Perfect Bound Paper
Publisher: Washington Square Press
Date Published: 1964
Description: Good. Mass Market Paperback. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Moderate wear, some underlining. Age yellowing. Notes inside wraps and on FEP. 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."
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