Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

 

 

This month we discussed Bridge of Clay, by Markus Zusak. It's The Lager Queen of Minnesota, by J. Ryan Stradal coming up next in June. For those of you who maybe haven't heard, we've arranged for Mr. Stradal to join us for our June 8th meeting via Zoom (yahoo!). With the governor recently announcing that he will be lessening the Covid-19 restrictions, Susan reports we will be able to meet together in the meeting room at the library for the June book club meeting, and join the Zoom call/conversation from there with picture and sound. Face masks and social distancing will most likely still apply, and if you'd prefer, you can certainly still join in on the meeting from home as we have been doing thus far. We'll announce the plan for the July meeting as the time gets closer and Susan has an opportunity to review the new Covid-19 guidelines. Stay tuned!

To the book~

Bridge of Clay is the powerful story of five brothers who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. As the Dunbar boys love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world, they discover the moving secret behind their father’s disappearance.

At the center of the Dunbar family is Clay, a boy who will build a bridge—for his family, for his past, for greatness, for his sins, for a miracle. The question is, how far is Clay willing to go? And how much can he overcome? 

The majority of the group just couldn't love this book, even though they wanted to, based on their sentiment about Mr. Zusak's previous novel, The Book Thief. They found the story longer than necessary, with too much flip-flopping back and forth between story lines, and believed those story lines to be largely confusing and disjointed as well. It was said the book was slow moving, hard to pick up and get engaged in, and a bit of a bore. All those in favor, however, cited this book as "literature", "poetry", and "literary genius". They raved about how well Mr. Zusak can craft a descriptive sentence and develop a character. They loved the story and truly savored their time with the book. Both sides could agree that there was a long list of characters that could be difficult to keep straight without the help of good note taking, that it took several chapters to become intrigued, and also that the concept of the story itself was a good one. 

It was predominantly hot or cold with this one, with very few in the lukewarm, "I liked it, but I didn't love it" category. Where did you find yourself on the spectrum? If you've read both The Book Thief and Bridge of Clay, which did you prefer?

 

At the end of every book club discussion we ask three questions and track the average answers:
Would we recommend this to another book club for discussion?
"NO"
Would we recommend this to a friend to read? 
"NO"
Rate the book 1-4 stars with 1 being the lowest rating: 
 2 stars