news | Monday January 26, 2015

Book Review: Birth of a Bridge in the Vancouver Sun

Special to the Sun, M.A.C. Farrant reviewed Maylis de Kerangal’s novel Birth of a Bridge (translated by Jessica Moore) last weekend. She writes, among other things, that

The book’s themes are mythic; its prose, symphonic.

The novel concerns humankind’s hunger for glory, and our drive to “master space,” a desire we will go to any length to fulfil. In the novel, this plays out through the building of a “superstar” bridge, “a technical epic,” one that is painted vermilion, a brilliant shade of red. The eventual job of the bridge is to bring two landscapes together, but, during the building it comes to resemble, with its miles of veinlike red cable, a living organism, a kind of monster powered by the energy of a hot and nervous people.

Read the full review: “French novelist explores mythic themes in ‘Birth of a Bridge’”