Has anyone read The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer? I'm not a huge fan of books set during times of war and so I was somewhat skeptical of this book, which is narrated by a Hungarian Jew living in France and Hungary during World War II, but found myself sucked into the story almost immediately.
Putting aside the subject matter, there are two reasons I think this book is worthy of reading (and discussing!):
* Tension: there is a story line about sneaking the main character's Jewish family out of Budapest, and by the time the inevitable happens and something goes wrong, Orringer has done such a good job building tension that getting the reader emotionally involved with the endeavor that my heart was literally racing. I wish I was as good at raising the stakes in my stories!
* Description: it's easy to make fun of authors who use so many metaphors, but Orringer reminded me that metaphors can serve a very important function by drawing lines between two otherwise unrelated objects or thoughts - thereby creating emotion and providing a more intimate look into the character's mind - rather than just a lazy way of trying to sound "literary."
An example: there is a scene early in the book when the main character and his lover are vacationing in Nice, and she's wearing a pin shaped like a starfish. At this point it seems absolutely hopeless that a clandestine love affair between a poor student in his early 20's and an older woman with an independent life and a rather big secret could do anything other than end very badly, and there's a really nice line about the starfish being adrift on the waves of her dark hair, which describes the situation in general. Much later in the book the two end up married and have a son, who the main character doesn't meet for some time because he (the main character, not the son) is in a forced labor camp. The main character describes the son's hand as being the exact shape and size as the starfish pin, which I thought was a pretty poignant way of making the reader think of the earlier scene and all that has passed since that point.
If anybody else has read this book I'd be curious to hear what you thought. Did you like it? If so, what did you think worked and what seemed less effective?
Putting aside the subject matter, there are two reasons I think this book is worthy of reading (and discussing!):
* Tension: there is a story line about sneaking the main character's Jewish family out of Budapest, and by the time the inevitable happens and something goes wrong, Orringer has done such a good job building tension that getting the reader emotionally involved with the endeavor that my heart was literally racing. I wish I was as good at raising the stakes in my stories!
* Description: it's easy to make fun of authors who use so many metaphors, but Orringer reminded me that metaphors can serve a very important function by drawing lines between two otherwise unrelated objects or thoughts - thereby creating emotion and providing a more intimate look into the character's mind - rather than just a lazy way of trying to sound "literary."
An example: there is a scene early in the book when the main character and his lover are vacationing in Nice, and she's wearing a pin shaped like a starfish. At this point it seems absolutely hopeless that a clandestine love affair between a poor student in his early 20's and an older woman with an independent life and a rather big secret could do anything other than end very badly, and there's a really nice line about the starfish being adrift on the waves of her dark hair, which describes the situation in general. Much later in the book the two end up married and have a son, who the main character doesn't meet for some time because he (the main character, not the son) is in a forced labor camp. The main character describes the son's hand as being the exact shape and size as the starfish pin, which I thought was a pretty poignant way of making the reader think of the earlier scene and all that has passed since that point.
If anybody else has read this book I'd be curious to hear what you thought. Did you like it? If so, what did you think worked and what seemed less effective?