The unforgettable, New York Times bestselling family saga from Markus Zusak, the storyteller who gave us the extraordinary bestseller THE BOOK THIEF, lauded by the New York Times as “the kind of book that can be life-changing.”NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY • THE WALL STREET JOURNAL “One of those monumental books that can draw you across space and time into … JOURNAL
“One of those monumental books that can draw you across space and time into another family’s experience in the most profound way.” —The Washington Post
“Mystical and loaded with heart, it’s another gorgeous tearjerker from a rising master of them.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Devastating, demanding and deeply moving.” —Wall Street Journal
The breathtaking story of five brothers who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. As the Dunbar boys love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world, they discover the moving secret behind their father’s disappearance.
At the center of the Dunbar family is Clay, a boy who will build a bridge—for his family, for his past, for greatness, for his sins, for a miracle.
The question is, how far is Clay willing to go? And how much can he overcome?
Written in powerfully inventive language and bursting with heart, BRIDGE OF CLAY is signature Zusak.
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The Dunbars are “a family of ramshackle tragedy”. Writing on the typewriter he digs up from his grandmother’s garden, oldest brother Matthew tells the story of his brothers Rory, Henry, Clay, and Tommy. Twenty-year-old Matthew is “the responsible one: The long-standing breadwinner”. Eighteen-year-old Rory is “the invincible one: The human ball and chain”. Seventeen-year-old Henry is “the moneymaker, the friendly one”. Sixteen-year-old Clay is “the quiet one, or the smiler”. And thirteen-year-old Tommy is the youngest, the pet collector”, whose pets – including a mule name Achilles – are named for the characters of Greek mythology who inhabit the tales their mother grew up with. But this is, essentially, Clay’s story: “We were all of us changed through him.” After an absence of eight years following their mother’s death, the boys’ father Michael comes back and asks his sons to help him build a bridge on his rural property. Clay is the only to take him up on his offer, and when he leaves to go with him, his brothers see it as a betrayal, and Matthew tells him not to come back. But Clay’s actions will eventually bring them all back together.
Our narrator Matthew writes cryptically, dropping hints of what is to come and interweaving stories from the past and the present, so that we have to work hard to put the pieces together and come up with the story as a whole. This turns what is, in essence, a simple family story into a literary masterpiece. We learn about the boys’ mother Penelope, how she came to leave them, and the part Homer and the piano played in both her life and her death. We learn about their father, his mother Adelle who originally owned the typewriter, his first love Abbey, and how he came to be known as “the murderer”. We find out how Penelope and Michael meet and how, while being opposites, they were a perfect match for each other. Books played a major part in both their lives and the lives of their children. For Penelope, there were Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, from which Tommy named his pets. For Michael, there was The Quarryman, the biography of Michelangelo Buonarotti, which became Clay’s favorite and with which he wooed Carey. In addition to the books, certain objects keep making an appearance: Adelle’s typewriter, Penelope’s piano, Penelope and Michael’s marital bed, Clay’s peg, and Achilles the mule. And I love this recurring line: “… it was strange to think, but he’d marry that girl one day.”
In his narrative, Matthew speaks directly to us, like he is recounting random memories:
“… here I am, in the kitchen, in the night—the old river mouth of light—and I’m punching and punching away.”
“And what else? What else was there, as we skip the years like stones? Did I mention how …”
“As it was, it started with me, in sixth grade, and now, as I type, I’m guilty; I apologize. This, after all, is Clay’s story, and now I write for myself.”
“Even now, as I punch what happened out …”
“There’s one more story I can tell you now, before I can leave you in peace.”
The book is beautifully formatted, with parts made to look like they were actually written with a typewriter. Each section contains one more element, building upon those in the previous sections and revealing a little bit more each time. The author interweaves four romances (three tragic and one happy) and writes in rich metaphors, the most obvious of which is the bridge bringing Michael back to his boys. Even though the language the author uses is simple, the construction and content are complex. He masterfully captures the Aussie vernacular and the Aussie spirit, and he has the ability to evoke images with a few sparse words:
“I remember how once it rained a whole fortnight, in summer, and we came home deep-fried in mud.”
“There was rain like a ghost you could walk through. Almost dry when it hit the ground.”
The book is full of touching moments described so matter-of-factly:
“They’d brought her in the metronome, and it was one of the boys who said it. I think his name was Carlos. ‘Breathe in time with this, Miss.’”
“… the woman inside was weightless. The coffin weighed a ton. She was a feather wrapped up in a chopping block.”
“She was famous for winning a Group One race, and dying the very next day—and Clay was the one to blame.”
“He was a great horse,” she went on, “and the perfect story—we wouldn’t love him so much if he’d lived.”
“She would never see us grow up. Just cry and silently cry.”
And, once again, as in “The Book Thief”, Death makes an appearance as a character:
“She’d started leaving us that morning, and death was moving in: He was perched there on a curtain rod. Dangling in the sun. Later, he was leaning, close but casual, an arm draped over the fridge; if he was minding the beer he was doing a bloody good job.”
“It was in there, out there, waiting. It lived on our front porch.”
Beautiful, poignant, memorable.
Warnings: coarse language, sexual references, violence.
Full blog post: https://www.booksdirectonline.com/2019/03/bridge-of-clay-by-markus-zusak.html
I held this tome of a book in my hands with trepidation at first, just because it’s a long read. Now I’ve finished it, I hold it like it’s a bible of words to be revered.
I simply loved this book.
Within the first few pages we’re introduced to the narrator, Matthew Dunbar, who, the day after getting married, is digging in someone’s backyard he doesn’t know for a typewriter he’s never seen before.
‘If before the beginning … was a typewriter, a dog and a snake, the beginning itself – eleven years previously – was a murderer, a mule and Clay.’
And from that point we are engulfed in the story of the five Dunbar boys whose mother, Penny has died and their father has fled. The oldest is Matthew and the fourth boy is Clay who builds a bridge.
The moving family saga swaps between the present, the past and the time before and while this may be confusing at first, this is a book that commands your undivided attention and almost your every waking moment. There’s a rhythm and heartbeat to the writing, much like the metronome used by the Penny when teaching kids to read. The writing is pared back and at times almost poetic. The words are there for a reason and boy, does Markus Zusak know how to put them together.
‘For the longest time then, ten minutes at least, he stood at the mouth of Archer street, relieved to have finally made it, terrified to be there. The street didn’t seem to care; its breeze was close but casual, its smoky scent was untouchable. Cars stubbed out rather than parked, and the powerlines drooped from the weight of mute, hot and bothered pigeons. Around it, a city climbed and called:
Welcome back, murderer.’
Each boy has his place in the family but Clay is the one they all look up to and need. The bonds of brotherhood can never be broken and their survival and hurt belongs to them all.
I loved the animals; the mule, Achilles, is a star in his own right. And who could forget fur-shedding Hector the cat, Agamemnon, the head-butting fish and Telemachus the pigeon?
We grow to love Penny, and understand her background and the power of motherhood on her tribe of boys. Her passing is truly heartbreaking.
The reader is privy to the rough and tumble of what young boys are like, beating each other up all in preparation for what lies ahead.
And like an onion we peel off the layers and the story reveals itself bit by bit so that by the end we know everything that’s happened and why.
I enjoyed spending time with the Dunbar boys. I worried for them, shed a tear for them, laughed with them, and didn’t want to leave them when I closed the final page. They will stay with me for a very long time.
Dive in, take your time, immerse yourself and enjoy this one.
As a published writer, I am tempted to scuttle all my books after reading any of Markus Zusak’s lyrical, mystical writings. Bridge of Clay is particularly interesting to me–first because of its portrayal of “normal” Australian family (Mom, Dad, 5 unique and amazing boys), second because the writing is so spare and razor sharp. Most of his sentences are one sentence (or less)! Yet they pack such intense emotion and power that not another word is needed. I can either quit writing or learn from the master. Since I can’t stop, I’ll learn and be a better writer.
Bridge of Clay is a wonderful novel about family and growing up. The stories are weaved in a way that keeps you wanting more. The Dunbar boys are a unique group of boys that show the reality of siblings and a family dynamic when you have all sons. I love how the stories overlap and resolve at later points as a way any story would be told from someone else’s perspective. My favorite part of the audiobook is how Markus Zusak narrates the story with the perfect amount of emotion. There are times that the story can be confusing because of the switch in time and perspective, but everything resolves itself by the end. I fell in love with the Dunbar family and their history and I’m sure you will too. Markus Zusak is a fantastic storyteller and I look forward to whatever he has in store for the future.
A slow start, and not an easy read to begin with, but once I got into it I found it hard to put down. The characters and the story stayed with me long after reading the last page. Pure perfection. Well worth the 10 year wait. Markus Zusak, I salute you.
I’m an avid reader and enjoy books about family members, and while that was the main focus of this book, I couldn’t connect with or care less about the characters in this book. I’ll admit, some parts were entertaining but they were few and far between, and the story was incredibly slow and hard to follow. Rarely do I give a book a disappointing two stars, but I’m afraid this one deserved them. Oh, well…
A superbly haunting story. If you let it, it will change you. The structure is more loose which I prefer. Zusak’s prose is every bit as confident as his other books. The unconnected start is dizzying but he warns the reader that the beginning isn’t the beginning.
The treasure within these pages are the Dunbar boys. They are every bit as wonderful as the McPheron brothers in Haruf’s amazing “Plainsong”. Perfectly imperfect characters that say as much with a look or a nod as any dialogue.
Bridge of Clay may be forever remembered as the book he wrote after his masterpiece. But for my money, this is far better journey.
Highly recommend this book, wonderful story.
No matter what Markus Zusak writes, it’s going to be compared to The Book Thief (aka, one of the most perfect books in the world) but Bridge of Clay stands on its own as a beautifully written, gut-wrenching tale told as only Mr. Zusak can. Half the time you’re scratching your head saying, “What is THAT about?” But he pulls you along, “Trust me. Just trust me.” And you do, because he’s amazing. And then you get there and you’re hair’s mussed and your heart is aching and you say, “I’m glad I trusted you.”
Beautiful book. Wear your thinking cap!
Zusak is one of my favorite authors of all time. I adore his writing style. This book is different, but WOW. It is art.
This is a powerful and emotional story allowed to unfurl in its own time through the the use of an unreliable narrator whose strength is his knowledge of his own weaknesses. Tremendous insights into family, love and redemption
This book had everything for me. A complete love for animals. Horses. Twisted and tortured family connections. A bit of mystery. Tough life but making the best of the moments. There was humour and sadness. Everything that life is.
A must read. He is a superb writer.
Simply put…I loved this! It made me laugh and made me cry and also made me desperately want a mule for my backyard (but definitely not my kitchen). The writing perfectly described what I think it would feel like to grow up in house with 5 boys, which at times made me envious and at others thankful that I am an only child. This story was much different from A Book Thief, but offered the same brilliant writing technique of Markus Zusak. I would definitely recommend this book!
Amazing. I cannot recommend this book enough. Another triumph for Marcus Zusak! An incredible tale of five brothers and the love and hope between them.
A wonderful tale of an unusual family. The premise is somewhat similar to the TV show Party of Five, but the strong characters and the book structure hold the tale together. Unlike Zuzak’s previous book, The Book Thief, this is not a YA book due to language and adult situations.
I found this book fascinating. Difficult to stay with in the early chapters; however, about 30% along, I needed to find out what happens with these 5 brothers and their father. Some unique and unusual word combinations and positions. Several times, I had to reread the sentences — but well worth the time. Creative use of settings (the river with the bridge building) and the roof scenes. Take your time and take your chances with this one.
This book had a convoluted beginning 50 pages. I kept thinking that I needed to go back a couple of pages and reread to make sense of it. I am sure the author thought this made his writing, which was overall quite good, more intellectual. It didn’t. Once this nonsense straightened out it was a great story.
Family relations were highlighted through good times and bad.
It jumps around in time and characters. Sorta hard to figure out what is happening to whom. But once you get into it, it is hard to put down. You want to know why the father is nicknamed “murderer” and what will happen to the five brothers.