Bibliofreakblog

Alexander’s Bridge by Willa Cather

The first thing you have to know is not about this book, or about Willa Cather.  It’s about me.  I have an abnormal love of suspension bridges.

The first really good story I ever wrote (and oh how I wish I had a link for you to whatever lit journal deigned to accept it!!!) was about the day the Ambassador Bridge opened just after the stock market crash in 1929, which goes from Detroit, MI to Windsor, Ontario.  For that story, I had to learn a lot about suspension bridges, even–horror of horrs!–a bit of the basic mathematical principles involved.

So suspension bridges in general, and especially suspension bridges used as metaphor in literature, are very near and dear to my heart.

So near and dear, in fact, that I’m willing to overlook some flaws.

Oh how I loved this book, despite the, at times, painfully obviousness that this is Cather’s first book ever published.  The characters–and thus the reasons for their actions–are just not quite there, not quite developed enough.  This may be especially clear because it is a novella.  It might have been fleshed out just a bit more, giving more instances, more chances to fulfill the characters.

And then on the other hand, the metaphor of the bridge, and the crack in Bartley Alexander’s character often alluded to, as he tries to support a double life, which weighs on his sense of self and morality, might have been subtler.  Bringing up the crack once in the beginning might have been sufficient, as we would naturally recall it without reminders.

The story goes that the year is 1912 (though it may have been based on the collapse of a bridge in 1907 in Quebec) and Bartley Alexander is a prosperous bridge builder.  By chance he enounters an old flame while on business in London, an actress who has done well for herself.  He starts an affair with her, making excuses to travel to London.  Each time he breaks it off, he ends up back with her.  While he always seemed promising, this crack wears on him, causing him to feel dead inside because of his guilt.  And this causes him to miss a telegram that might have saved his bridge.
Buy Alexander’s Bridge on Amazon 

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

Willa Cather: A Life Saved Up by Hermione Lee
Willa Cather: Queering America by Marilee Lindemann 
Nana by Emile Zola
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
The Marble Faun by Nathanael Hawthorne 
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Indian Summer by William Dean Howells
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

Other Works by Willa Cather:

The Song of the Lark
Willa Cather in Europe: Her Own Story of the First Journey
O Pioneers!
One of Ours
Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches, and Letters 
Collected Stories 
My Antonia 
Youth and the Bright Medusa 
A Lost Lady
Great Short Works of Willa Cather
Cather: Stories, Poems, and Other Writings 
The Troll Garden 
The Professor’s House
My Mortal Enemy 
Sapphira and the Slave Girl 
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies on Writing As an Art
Lucy Gayheart 
Shadows on the Rock