Review: Mrs. Bridge

Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This review is really more about the 1-2 punch combo of Mrs. and Mr. Bridge, both of which I read this year (although I'll admit, by the time I got around to the Mr. I’d already forgotten a lot of the Mrs. and needed a refresher).

The gist of these books is that they present a series of vignettes in the lives of an "average" Kansas City couple living during the time period between the two World Wars. The fancy literary term of the day here is pointillist fiction (a term I think borrowed from the artistic movement best exemplified by George Seurat of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte fame) -- it's through these seemingly benign episodic encounters that you come to appreciate a fuller picture of what life was like for the nuclear American family in the day, or more specifically, the type of family that best exemplifies the American Dream without fully realizing all of its implications.

In other words, these books are unspoken tragedies, and they explain a lot about a particular distinctly American mindset that I'm sure continues to persist to this day.

The Bridges, by American standards (make of that what you will), are well-meaning parents. But there's so much they miss in their own interactions with their kids, with their communities, and with each other, and moreover so many moments where they "almost" get it right and then fail because they're stuck in their own ways of thinking, that it's frustrating beyond measure (again, putting up that disclaimer to avoid if you can't handle books where you feel the need to fix the characters' problems for them). These are probably the most direct examples of that infamous Socrates quote that I imagine probably sees overuse in high-school English papers: "The unexamined life is not worth living."

What honestly bugs me about the Bridges so much is, I can see it. I can totally see families in America living like this, fluttering day-to-day, moment to moment chasing after some mirage, some ultimately meaningless idea of an American Dream without realizing the cost that comes with it even as their kids and social circles ultimately abandon them. They're so stuck in adhering to these ideals that they end up ill-equipped to deal with real, meaningful social change as it happens around them (note: this is just in the decades leading up to the 60's). And then they almost wonder what happened decades later as they see more than half of their lives go by, and... what exactly to show for it?

If you only had to read one book, I’d recommend Mrs. Bridge first as it’s much more of a standalone book that gets the point across really well. Mr. Bridge is essentially a companion book written a decade later that fills in the gaps of the story from the husband’s point of view, with some additional moments informed in retrospect by the chaotic experiences of the 60's (i.e. expect to see more of the race relations perspective played up because Mr. Bridge is totally a racist asshole and btw it's Kansas). But without knowledge of the overarching plot from the wife, his story honestly still feels a little incomplete all the way to the ending.