Bridge of Clay

Product Information

Working with Zusak throughout the creation of BRIDGE OF CLAY was his editor, Erin Clarke, who says, “Markus is one of the kindest and most generous people I know. He’s also meticulous at his craft, which despite the struggles that caused over the past decade, ultimately rewarded not only him but me, as his editor, and I hope and believe, his readers.”

The story opens with Matthew, the oldest Dunbar boy, bringing home the old TW, the typewriter of a Grandmother they never knew. With heft and historical scope, Zusak creates a sensitively rendered tale of loss, grief, and guilt’s manifestations.”— Publishers Weekly,starred review I adored Markus Zusak’s modern classic The Book Thief. Its subject matter will hopefully never be repeated. And that novel’s mastery, it’s knife-edge balance of whimsy and gravitas was never going to be repeated. So the comparisons should, and in my review will stop there. Bridge of Clay is a tender book, set in a world that is anything but. Its enormous ambitions are sustained by heartfelt beliefs, not least in the power of love. This vast novel is a feast of language and irony. Its narrative structure makes demands on the reader but it constantly works through tangled lives to achieve moments of sublime clarity and insight. It is such a compassionate book that it is hard not to fall a bit in love with it yourself. Bridge of Clay shares with Zusak's The Book Thief an underlying sense of the possibility of joy and human dignity even in dehumanising situations. It is driven by no agenda other than a desire to celebrate the ups and downs of flawed mortals. The makes it a breath of fresh air.' Sydney Morning Herald

Bridge of Clay

There's some Homerian aspects, too, the most obvious of which being the boys' mule Achilles, but there are allusions to Homer's work throughout.

Mystical and loaded with heart, it’s another gorgeous tearjerker from a rising master of them.” — Entertainment Weekly I liked the magical writing in The Book Thief but the voice of this story was not appropriate for a story of this kind and he used metaphor very much which ended up being annoying. I knew that the writing is just not for me after a few chapters and Hala who BR this with me felt the same and decided to DNF it immediately. Deserves a place on the shelf with the Diary of Anne Frank. . . Poised to become a classic.”— USA Today I love Markus Zusak’s characters, especially these boys. Like Tim Winton, he seems to capture that wonderful mix of innocence and hope with the life-changing reality of tragedy and despair they can’t escape. Things happen that would bring the best of us undone.

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In fact, the first part of the book is a trundling, elliptical orgasm that strings along a bunch of words about a murderer and a mule and some animals named after characters in The Odyssey. It's initially intriguing, but it wears out its welcome fast when the pretension (not tension) continues to build and it becomes super obvious both who the murderer is and that Zusak is essentially exploring identical themes he already wrote about in - you guessed it - The Book Thief. Matthew Dunbar – the oldest Dunbar boy, and narrator of the book. As the oldest brother, responsibility to take care of the family fell to him once their father left.

you know that one book that makes zero sense 99% of the time and then you read one line and it all hits you and you're like WOW THIS IS AN INCREDIBLY CRAFTED MASTERPIECE? I found the ramped-up testosterone of every Dunbar boy tiresome - not a single one of them is anything but Hypermasculine. Michael Dunbar – father of the Dunbar boys, often referred to as 'the murderer', his story is one of the main plot lines throughout the work. so im pretty sure that even an infinite combination of words will spectacularly fail in describing what this story means to me, because it has been nearly 12 hours since i finished reading this and i still am at a loss at how to convey the heartbreaking beauty of this book. I have a customer that comes into work every Thursday. His name is Doug and we bonded over Markus Zusak and over the last eight months we've become really great friends. I lent him copy of this book to read and he left little notes throughout it and it's a copy I will treasure forever. And soon we're going to go and meet Markus Zusak at a book event and we're so excited. These books have changed my life and they've also introduced wonderful people to me too.It’s this gradual build up that leads to the emotional pay-off as they proceed towards the tragedy you know is coming. That terrible feeling where you know something awful is bound to happen, and there is nothing you can do, so you just don’t want to deny it for a little bit longer... It’s the feeling the characters feel, and thanks to Zusaks brilliant set up, you feel it with them. Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak was ten years in the making so I was expecting big things from this story and I wasn’t disappointed.