Thornton Wilder won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928 for his second novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. It explores the story of five people who die in a bridge accident, how they found their way there, and whether each of them had to die at that moment.
The book's chronicler Brother Juniper believed that "Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan." Maybe things aren't that clear-cut and I'm sure we all have own thoughts on the matter, but it's a debate that will probably run for the rest of time. As long as people live and die, we will read and write about it, speak and listen about it, and think about it. This book offers few answers, but the question posed is essentially inanswerable on all but a purely personal level. It made me think about the question though, which was presumably the author's intention.
The story attached to it is therefore secondary. It is succinct, skilfully telling intertwining narratives in a mere 140 pages. The tales themselves are nicely told, but in some ways it's not easy to get too attached to characters who you know are going to die from the first page. In another way, the fact that you do get to know them, that they are real people with real lives, rather than faceless victims only makes it the event more tragic, whatever the cause. Which I suppose was the point.
Book number: 2
Title: The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Author: Thornton Wilder
Category: Pulitzer Prize winners
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