Customer Reviews

Mrs Bridge

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Let me be blunt: you must read this book. It's not long. It's not difficult. It's written in short sections, tiny glimpses into the life of a Kansas housewife in the early 20th Century struggling with the repression of her feelings. 'Oh God!' you may think. 'Not another book about the travails of being a frustrated woman before the Second World War. I've already read Mildred Pierce, do I really need to read another one?' Well, yes you do. 'Mrs Bridge' is so perfect that I felt suffocated reading it. It's sad and bleak, the story of a woman who is unable to imagine an alternative to her restrained existence, much less break out from it. But don't pass this book over because you think it will be miserable! It's also full of humour and warmth! Mrs Bridge may be trapped in a prison of her own making but the author doesn't judge her for it, he presents her with empathy and compassion. Buy this book and read one of the great - under-valued - works of the last hundred years.

Mrs Bridge, India to her friend Grace, lives a generally unremarkable life but Connell makes this an incredibly moving read and packs a great deal of unspoken 'truth' into the 117 very short chapters. Much of the Mrs Bridge's story appears quite mundane as she cares for her family, attends various functions and 'looks after her home' (overseeing the maids) but the snippets we are given open us up to her inner struggles and sadness.
You can read the 180 pages easily in one sitting but it can be enjoyable taking your time over a book like this to catch the humour and whimsy in amongst the quiet, almost claustrophobic life she lives - her taking up of hobbies that fall by the wayside, her relationships with her immediate family that touch on racism and social class in a very telling way and her interactions with her peers all lead us to a very clear picture of so iety at this time in America.
Definitely worth reading and I will look out for the companion book Mr Bridge to compare life from the other view point!

This funny little book was most unusual, badged as a Penguin modern classic I can't say I entirely disagree. The book is short at only just over 180 pages, it is an easy one sitting read , but that is not to say the storyline or the characters are 'easy'. The story is sad, bittersweet, a bit depressing at times, but above all I found it quite amusing, I chuckled at quite a few of the paragraphs (which are also very short). I could see myself in some of the situations and I was able to laugh at them even more then.

I think that overall this book is very cleverly written, it sets you up to form an initial opinion of Mrs Bridge and then by the time you have finished you may see her reflected in yourself, but in a slightly disquieting way.....and then your opinion may change.

A good read but not a 'feel good' read - I would recommend it regardless!

Mrs Bridge is a housewife in the country-club district of Kansas City, Missouri. She hardly sees her husband who works long hours so that she can spend her days in 'exquisite idleness' - an idleness which threatens to drive her insane. Mrs Bridge is very much a product of her time: she has free time but no freedom, she is afraid to depart from a pleasant but bland demeanour, and she is just as much constrained by her own ignorance and lack of imagination as by the social structures of the thirties and forties.

Connell's narrative is ironic and disingenuous. In 117 very short chapters we are presented with episodes in Mrs Bridges's life, sometimes funny in their banality, sometimes biting in their social observations which are uneditorialized but unforgiving. There is the danger that the reader ends up smugly mocking Mrs Bridge, but Connell allows us to pity her to the point where this becomes a deeply sad and rather frightening book.

Mr Bridge remains in the background, only sometimes tantalizingly coming to the fore. Connell wrote a companion novel "Mr Bridge" which is soon to be published in Penguin Modern Classics: I can't wait to see the same decades through his eyes. Meanwhile this Penguin Modern Classic comes with an excellent introduction by Joshua Ferris.

I can't help feeling that this book's cover is seriously misleading. The Telegraph's endorsement, in big print, begins "Very, very funny..." On the front cover, Dorothy Parker is quoted, "How it is done, I wish I knew." So, you begin reading with high expectations about the humour of the book you've just picked up.

Don't get me wrong. This IS a funny book - just not as simply funny as you might have thought from the cover. Poor Mrs Bridge is trapped in a perfect suburban life, perfectly described in a series of piercingly short chapters - each one a pin in the placid doll of Mrs Bridge.

We are invited to laugh at Mrs Bridge because she isn't a simple victim of fate. She actively colludes in circumscribing her own horizons, whilst recognising and mourning what is becoming of her. One night, as she spreads cold cream over her face, `she considered her fingers, which dipped into the jar of their own accord. Rapidly, soundlessly, she was disappearing into white, sweetly scented anonymity. Gratified by this she smiled, and perceived a few seconds later that beneath the mask she was not smiling. All the same, being committed, there was nothing to do but proceed.'
It's a beautifully crafted book - and a thoroughly uncomfortable read for any of us who has put off doing that bigger, more difficult thing that will open our horizons, to turn instead to doing the ironing, making a cup of tea or picking up a magazine. Essential reading!

I first heard of this book when David Baddiel recommended it on Radio 4. It isn't the kind of book I would instantly associate with him, but having read it I can see its appeal, and why it reappears periodically as a cult classic.

It is the perfect book for someone who is busy.
It is easy to dip into. Five pages is quite a long chapter, some are as short as a paragraph. However as you read more of the book the story and inner life of Mrs Bridge slowly unfolds.
It starts pretty much with her birth, but that and the start of her marriage are dealt with in the first chapter (not quite two pages). From then on the story unfolds in her thoughts and experience of the minutiae of everyday life: Her Children, The Low Pressure Salesman, voting, a second lesson in Spanish. Mrs Bridge starts things, tries to improve herself, but then inertia over takes her. It is heart warming, funny, acutely observed and very recognisable even today, for example: the chapter "Psst! where Mrs Bridge asks her husband when they are in Paris how can everyone tell they are American. And so the story goes on past her children leaving home, to the final beautifully poignant chapter.

It is beautifully written, and highly evocative; and the image created in the last chapter is one that will remain with me.

I would highly recommend you read and reread Mrs Bridge.

Mrs Bridge is written in the form of short vignettes. These are funny, poignant and intriguing - like dozens of short stories. The book is set in the 1930s and 1940s in Kansas City and reflects on Mrs Bridge's rather empty life as she moves from household tasks to charity work to entertaining and party-going. She has a very comfortable life with a successful husband and three thriving children but everything seems to be a disappointment to her. Her husband is distant and none of her children turn out quite how she would have wished. (If only she could have had complete power over them!) Even her maid treats her with a sort of benign contempt. Many readers may find themselves envying her advantages. Harriet the maid does the cooking and cleaning and Ingrid does all the laundry. But Mrs Bridge does not know what to do with all the time available to her. She resolves to learn a foreign language or to read something serious but never really gets started on anything.

What this book describes beautifully is the way in which women like her found themselves hamstrung by social conventions of the time. Her daughter befriends Alice a "coloured girl". Alice is bright and inventive and an ideal friend for Carolyn but Mrs Bridge makes sure the friendship is only fleeting. She would not be able to verbalise the problem - she just knew it was not right. Later she is unable to inform any of her friends that her daughter is engaged because her fiancé is the son of a plumber.

Much of the book is a reflection of the mores of the time. When her daughter tells her that her husband had hit her Mrs Bridge replies: "You must have done something to provoke. Didn't you?"

This is a fascinating book of quiet desperation as a woman's world spins out of control.

A gentle story of an American wife and mother's life before and just after the Second World War. Married to a man who works all hours as a lawyer, she raises their three children and appears to exist in a haze while life goes on around her. She is a good-natured but indecisive woman who means well and intends to do things which she never quite accomplishes. You like her, but you would like to give her a pep talk! Beautifully written in short chapters, each one another little episode in her life and that of her family, I enjoyed reading this book.

Mrs Bridge is an affluent wife living in the American Midwest between the World Wars. She is befuddled by - well, almost everything around her really - her children, her husband, politics, social conventions, her household staff, etc. This is a bleakly comic novel, and yet the story at the heart of it is both terrifying and desperate. For although Mrs Bridge leads a privileged and comfortable life, well sheltered from any of the real ugliness of the world, although she dedicates herself to playing the role society has dealt her of a devoted wife and doting mother, there is a darkness that threatens to encroach on her carefully ordered world. The problem is that Mrs Bridge's life has been so sheltered, she doesn't even quite recognise or understand that darkness. She vaguely realises there is something missing, and yet she has never quite been able to allow herself to explore it, nor to embark on the journey that would allow her to find it. This is an absolute masterpiece of economical, understated writing which still manages to examine a society in crisis and make a strong statement about the particular culture in which it is set. And all whilst being an incredibly accessible, deceptively breezy read.

This little book is a re-issue of a novel first published in 1959, and tells the story of the life of a very ordinary small town American housewife at the time of WW2. Beautifully written, in spare prose (it reminded me a little of Barbara Pym), it describes in small vignettes (117 chapters in 187 pages) the everyday happenings in the life of Mrs. Bridge, from her girlhood up until her children leaving home.

The genius of this book is that it makes a such lovely read out of a small life in which very little happens. Mrs. Bridge (never referred to by her first name) marries, raises her family and goes about her everyday business. Her prosperous lawyer husband comes and goes, working hard and often absent; her daughter Ruth moves away from her - physically and emotionally - as she grows up; Carolyn, more biddable, remains fairly close to her mother; her son Douglas, sullen and reluctant to conform, fails to understand what his mother wants from him (very little really; conventional behaviour, nice manners).

There are some lovely touches, and the observation of human behaviour is at times very funny. Mrs. Bridge, in the Louvre: "...immediately...recognised the Venus do Milo, even though...from the rear, and of course the Mona Lisa was unmistakable; it looked exactly like the reproductions. The tapestries seemed familiar somehow; perhaps it was that most tapestries looked alike, and most Greek vases, and all mummmies".

As the children grow up and leave home, Mrs. Bridge finds she has less and less to do, and begins to question what her life is about. She does some voluntary work (eg distributing second-hand clothes to the poor; wearing gloves, of course), and goes into town, ostensibly to do shopping; meets up with friends.

My one quibble with the book is the ending, which is rather sudden and inconclusive; otherwise it is a treat. It is the kind of book to be dipped into as well as read through, as each chapter could stand on its own, and it is not a riveting read as it has little in the way of plot. But therein lies its genius. Few writers would be able to make a novel out of so little, and make it so enjoyable. Highly recommended.