'Intriguing' - that's Eileen Dunne's word for the latest novel from Markus Zusak, the best-selling Australian author of The Book Thief which has sold by the truck-load since it first appeared in 2005. In fact, the novel has sold over 16 million copies since publication, and has been translated into more than 45 languages...
Narrated by Death - yes - and aimed at a Young Adult readership, The Book Thief was successfully adapted for a 2013 Hollywood film, starring Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson. The novel told the story of a young German girl whose family sheltered a Jewish refugee during the Second World War. It has taken Zusak more than a decade to write Bridge of Clay and it is very different, though death and books loom large throughout.
Bridge of Clay is set in a Sydney suburb with sections located in the outback, and it tells the story of the five Dunbar brothers, Mathew, Rory, Henry, Clay and Tommy, a ‘family of ramshackle tragedy’. Mathew is telling the story eleven years after the central events. Cryptically, he reveals that in the beginning 'there was a murderer, a mule and Clay.’ How could the reader not be intrigued?
The murderer turns out to be the boys’ father, Michael Dunbar, who has walked out on them following the death of their mother Penny from cancer. The boys are living on their own with an array of animals and no adult supervision, while Mathew is, at first, the only earner. In their disorder, however, there is some order, and their neighbour Mrs.Chilman keeps an eye out.
Things take a significant turn when their father comes back, seeking help to build a bridge near the farm where he now lives. From that juncture in the narrative Mathew weaves his tale, going back to the details of Penny and Michael Dunbar's story, how they came to Archer Street and the happy life they had there with their sons.
We know that Penny has died, but it is in the telling of her journey to death that Zusak is at his strongest, as Mathew tells it: "She would never see us grow up. Just cry and silently cry. She’d never see my brothers finish high school, and other absurdist milestones; she’d never see us struggling and suffering, the first time we put on a tie. She wouldn’t be there to quiz first girlfriends. Had this girl ever heard of Chopin? Did she know of the great Achilles? All these silly things, all laden with beautiful meaning ….."
It is Clay who decides to go and help his father, and as the novel progresses we understand why. The book is fundamentally about love and loss, and ultimately the ties that bind - but to reveal any more would be to spoil the narrative.
As the novel jumps from one scene to another, it requires focus. Bridge of Clay is not a book you can leave aside for days and then return to - another novelist, Jodi Picoult, declares that she ‘inhaled it all in one sitting’, no easy task as it’s almost 600 pages long.
A perfect book to get lost in over the Christmas holidays, perhaps.
