The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Whatever happened to Wilder? He was a lion in his day, prized — Pulitzer-prized, as this book was — a star of stage and page. Today, notwithstanding the occasional production of Our Town or The Skin of Our Teeth, he’s ever in danger of falling out of fashion. He seems too courtly, too composed. For proof of how powerful those qualities can be, there’s this book. In 1714, “the finest bridge in all Peru” collapses and five people plunge to their deaths. Brother Juniper, a Franciscan missionary, decides to track down their individual stories to prove that even what seem to be random misfortunes are consistent with God’s plan. That his discoveries turn out to be more complex will come as no surprise. What may surprise are the beguilements of Wilder’s teasing, ironic, beautifully written tale, unlike anything else in American fiction.
A - B
- The Adventures of Augie March
- All the King's Men
- American Pastoral
- An American Tragedy
- Animal Farm
- Appointment in Samarra
- Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
- The Assistant
- At Swim-Two-Birds
- Atonement
- Beloved
- The Berlin Stories
- The Big Sleep
- The Blind Assassin
- Blood Meridian
- Brideshead Revisited
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey
C - D
- Call It Sleep
- Catch-22
- The Catcher in the Rye
- A Clockwork Orange
- The Confessions of Nat Turner
- The Corrections
- The Crying of Lot 49
- A Dance to the Music of Time
- The Day of the Locust
- Death Comes for the Archbishop
- A Death in the Family
- The Death of the Heart
- Deliverance
- Dog Soldiers
F - G
- Falconer
- The French Lieutenant's Woman
- The Golden Notebook
- Go Tell it on the Mountain
- Gone With the Wind
- The Grapes of Wrath
- Gravity's Rainbow
- The Great Gatsby
H - I
- A Handful of Dust
- The Heart is A Lonely Hunter
- The Heart of the Matter
- Herzog
- Housekeeping
- A House for Mr. Biswas
- I, Claudius
- Infinite Jest
- Invisible Man
L - N
O - R
- On the Road
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- The Painted Bird
- Pale Fire
- A Passage to India
- Play It As It Lays
- Portnoy's Complaint
- Possession
- The Power and the Glory
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
- Rabbit, Run
- Ragtime
- The Recognitions
- Red Harvest
- Revolutionary Road
S - T
- The Sheltering Sky
- Slaughterhouse Five
- Snow Crash
- The Sot-Weed Factor
- The Sound and the Fury
- The Sportswriter
- The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
- The Sun Also Rises
- Their Eyes Were Watching God
- Things Fall Apart
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- To the Lighthouse
- Tropic of Cancer
Sections
