Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Here are the five Dunbar brothers: reliable Matthew, the oldest and the eloquent narrator of this extraordinary book; incorrigible Rory; Puck, with a pair of fists; Henry, who—with a talent for making money—knows the odds; Clay, the fourth son and protagonist, is "the best of us," according to Matthew; and youngest Tommy, the animal collector. Their mother is dead, and their father has fled, until, one day, he returns to ask for help building a bridge. Only Clay agrees to help, and their bridge quickly assumes symbolic value. Zusak (The Book Thief, 2006) offers up a narrative that is really two stories: one of the present, the story of the bridge and of Clay's love for the girl across the street; and the second of the past, occupied by the boys' childhood and stories that Clay loves—The Iliad, The Odyssey. The tone is sometimes somber and always ominous, leaving readers anxious about the fates of these characters whom they have grown to love. Zusak pushes the parameters of YA in this gorgeously written novel: a character has scrap-metal eyes; rain is like a ghost you could walk through. In the end, it always comes back to Clay, that lovely boy, as a neighbor calls him. A lovely boy and an unforgettably lovely book to match. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A national author tour, insane marketing, and an initial 500,000 print run await Zusak's first novel since his critically acclaimed, best-selling The Book Thief. Expect another sensation. Grades 10-12. Copyright 2018 Booklist Reviews.
BookPage Reviews
Bridge of Clay
In Markus Zusak's first release since the publication of his number one New York Times bestseller The Book Thief, he weaves a modern epic of great love, wrenching loss and the sustaining power of familial bonds.
The world of the five Dunbar boys is one of love and blasphemy, fists and forgiveness. It is a world marked by tragedy—first by the untimely death of their mother and then by their father's abrupt abandonment. Each of the boys deals with grief in their own way, but Clay, the fourth boy, holds a secret. And when their father suddenly reappears with a strange request, it is Clay who answers his plea. But in doing so, he must face the wrath and confusion of his brothers and ultimately help them piece together the full truth of their family legacy.
With fully developed characters and intricate depictions of both adolescence and adulthood, this book straddles the line between young adult and adult fiction. Either way, Bridge of Clay is Zusak at his best. To read a novel by this masterful author is to embark on an immersive journey that challenges readers to expand their understanding of what it is to be human. In this tale, Zusak explores how the intricate tapestries of our lives are woven not just by the decisions we make but also by those of the people closest to us, creating an interconnectedness from which no one, for better or worse, can ever completely extract themselves.
This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
Copyright 2018 BookPage Reviews.Horn Book Guide Reviews
Zusak presents an epic saga of five rambunctious Australian brothers, their long-suffering parents, and the bonds of love that tie them together. The eldest Dunbar brother narrates this story in an elliptical, digressive, somewhat frustratingly enigmatic style. The distinctly Australian landscape is fully realized, and the (many) supporting characters are convincing in their brief cameos, but like the impressionistic vignettes that make up the plot, they are subsumed by this overly demanding book's heftier elements. Copyright 2019 Horn Book Guide Reviews.
Horn Book Magazine Reviews
Twelve years after the American publication of The Book Thief (rev. 3/06), Zusak returns with an epic saga of five rambunctious Australian brothers, their long-suffering parents, and the bonds of love that tie them together. Matthew Dunbar, the eldest brother, narrates this story in an elliptical, digressive, somewhat frustratingly enigmatic style that ranges among the past, present, and future of all characters with an inexplicably high degree of omnis-cience. "In the beginning there was one murderer, one mule and one boy, but this isn't the beginning, it's before it, it's me, and I'm Matthew, and here I am, in the kitchen, in the night—the old river mouth of light—and I'm punching and punching away." The prose ebbs and flows, cascading through long and short sentences, fragments, clipped paragraphs, and staccato rhythms. The distinctly Australian landscape is fully realized, and the supporting characters (a very large number of them) are convincing in their brief cameos, but like the impressionistic vignettes that make up the plot, they are subsumed by the heftier elements. These include themes of love, forgiveness, redemption—and journeys; striking imagery and symbolism, especially in relation to the titular bridge; and abundant literary allusions, particularly to The Odyssey and The Iliad. But while Zusak is a talented writer, the self-indulgent and elegiac prose asphyxiates any semblance of good storytelling, making this book too demanding for most readers, regardless of age. jonathan hunt Copyright 2018 Horn Book Magazine Reviews.
Kirkus Reviews
Years after the death of their mother, the fourth son in an Australian family of five boys reconnects with his estranged father. Matthew Dunbar dug up the old TW, the typewriter his father buried (along with a dog and a snake) in the backyard of his childhood home. He searched for it in order to tell the story of the family's past, a story about his mother, who escaped from Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall; about his father, who abandoned them all after their mother's death; about his brother Clay, who built a bridge to reunite their family; and about a mule named Achilles. Zusak (The Book Thief, 2006, etc.) weaves a complex narrative winding through flashbacks. His prose is thick with metaphor and heavy with allusions to Homer's epics. The story romanticizes Matthew and his brothers' often violent and sometimes homophobic expressions of their cisgender, heterosexual masculinity with reflections unsettlingly reminiscent of a "boys will be boys" attitude. Wome n in the book primarily play the roles of love interests, mothers, or (in the case of their neighbor) someone to marvel at the Dunbar boys and give them jars to open. The characters are all presumably white. Much like building a bridge stone by stone, this read requires painstaking effort and patience. (Fiction. 16-adult) Copyright Kirkus 2018 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Reviews
In this rollicking new novel by Zusak (
Publishers Weekly Reviews
This exquisitely written multigenerational family saga by Zusak (
School Library Journal Reviews