Mrs. Bridge » (Anniversary Edition)

Evan Connell's other novels include Mr. Bridge, The Diary of a Rapist, and The Connoisseur. He has also written short stories, collected in Saint Augustine's Pigeon, book-length poems (Notes From a Bottle Found On the Beach at Carmel and Points for a Compass Rose) and nonfiction (most recently the best-selling Son of the Morning Star). All of these titles are available from North Point Press.

In Mrs. Bridge, Evan S. Connell, a consummate storyteller, artfully crafts a portrait using the finest of details in everyday events and confrontations. With a surgeon’s skill, Connell cuts away the middle-class security blanket of uniformity to expose the arrested development underneath—the entropy of time and relationships lead Mrs. Bridge's three children and husband to recede into a remote silence, and she herself drifts further into doubt and confusion. The raised evening newspaper becomes almost a fire screen to deflect any possible spark of conversation. The novel is comprised of vignettes, images, fragments of conversations, events—all building powerfully toward the completed group portrait of a family, closely knit on the surface but deeply divided by loneliness, boredom, misunderstandings, isolation, sexual longing, and terminal isolation. In this special fiftieth anniversary edition, we are reminded once again why Mrs. Bridge has been hailed by readers and critics alike as one of the greatest novels in American literature.

New York Times Book Review

For all their satire and dark implications, the novels of the Bridge family remain in the memory as triumphs of faultless realism. Mr. Connell's art is one of restraint and perfect mimicry.