The Bridges Of Madison County (1995) - Plot & Excerpts
Everything about this book is ice cube slowly melting on hot skin. His essence which he wore like a mantle regally, reached into her strangled mute soul and caused it to speak again, to live again.Excellent good read! Here's the thing. I think those of us in the avid readers club sleep a lot of books that go to cinema. We may think, I saw the movie, I liked or didn't like it, why bother with the books. This is a thought process that we are all guilty of and I am working diligently to correct this flaw within myself. I have read quite a few books of late that have become cinema renditions that may enhance the interpretation of the book however more times then not they are gross misinterpretations full of short comings and visions from directors vs authors. I encourage reading the book versions as a comparison vs companion because most times you are getting two completely different views. That being said, if you have not read this book, pick it up and I don't want to hear a soul tell me "well I saw the movie." That is like saying I read a book about Paris, so now I don't need to go. I watched a movie about marriage so I know all there is.. I once saw a baby so now I know about motherhood....apples vs oranges. Pick up this book! As lovers of literature, the attraction is not just in the story but real lovers.. We love words. What they mean in the dictionary, in the scope of the story/characters and how they relate to us in our own lives. There is extreme beauty in words and how they form, bloom and blossom in our minds. The make us silently smile after reading a passage. We sit with a finger marking the page and stare for a moment at nothing but our minds vision of the beauty of a word. I adore a book, an author who opens themself up to conveying words so powerful that it gives me pause. That was this book. 171 pages I could have finished in a day but I had no desire to and frankly I don't recommend it. You don't quickly whiff a flower and quickly move on. That's a sin. You stop, admire it's beauty, inhale it's heady aroma, let it permeate your every sense as you pause and ponder the wonder of miracle of nature. That was the experience of this book for me. I loved this book. It will go up on my list of must reads of a lifetime. I now hold it dear as a beautifully written work by an author that was both lyrical and poetic. I will surely find myself reading this book again for the sheer creativeness of its prose. I have quoted till my little heart was content and still found myself pulling on restraint for not wanting to give the secrets of the whole book away to those who have yet to read it. I will say "yet" because you simply must. Robert the author causes the helpless reader to fall head over heels as completely in love with Robert the character as his lady love Francesca. If you've seen the movie you may visualize a wiry Clint Eastwood, if you haven't your mind will picture someone different, either way you'll find yourself attracted to this unearthly character of a man who can truly only exist within the confines of the lines of this lyrical book. Robert Kincaid is self tamed wild animal who accidentally or fatally stalks into the life of a subdued house wife from Iowa named Francesca Johnson. There is much one can say about their relationship if one has not read this book. Once you have, one thing is for sure, you will be so immersed, so intertwined within their feelings and as a reader and experiencer of real life you might feel like you were just temporarily possessed by these people because the experience was so deep. Right or wrong this reader can only state the facts. Francesca felt caged for years, Robert freed her. Robert felt he was always moving and searching for a love that he felt home when he found Francesca. Life is complicated. I appreciated that the author didn't just give us a brilliant love story floating in the clouds to ride off into the sunset because that is not reality. I like that he (author) broke our hearts in the end just like real life. Even floating high up in the clouds Icarus flew too close to the sun and had to fall. That is reality. Robert and Francesca knew this. Robert James Waller knew this. We all must know this. But no one can take the memory of flying high and the warmth of the burning sun. Robert and Francesca never did. The readers.. We never have to as we revisit this book. Perfect 7 stars from me (aka GR 5). I recommend it to the true romantics, to the lovers of beautiful literature, to those who want to compare it to the movie.
Read on the WondrousBooks blog. * Spoilers ahead. Though, honestly, if you've read even one Nicholas Sparks book, none of this should come as a surprise. *So, I looked at the bestseller lists for 1993 and this one was the top book for the entire year. I needed a book published in '93, because of the 2015 Reading Challenge: A Book That Came Out the Year You Were Born. I later found out that it was actually published in 1992, but I consider my duty done, since I couldn't find anything else connected specifically to 1993.Anyway, I'll be blunt and I feel the need to apologize in advance: this is a book written for women who are past their prime and unhappy about their lives and look for hope wherever they can find it. It's not a very good book either. It tells the story of a permanently sweaty photographer and a lonely farm wife, both of whom really want to have sex. There's insta-love, almost insta-sex and a tragic separation of two people who are truly meant to be together - I mean, he asked her for directions, she noticed how sexily sweaty he is and that he has sweat stains on watch and drops of sweat on his chest, and decided to invite him over to show off her sexy 49-year-old butt and to shag him on their second "date".And to top that off, just before she died she wrote a letter to her children, which innocently starts with: "If possible, please sit at the old kitchen table to read [this letter]. You'll understand that request shortly."Then there is a lot of blah-blah-blah. And then, the big reveal a.k.a. why should they sit at the old kitchen table: "In our old kitchen, Robert and I spent hours together. We talked and danced by candlelight. And, yes, we made love there..." I mean... HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHShe and Robert were separated because of her children, so she decided to get back at them by making them sit at the same table she had sex with a random guy on, while making them read about it. HAHAHAHAHAHAH WIN! And also...As far as the love story goes, it's a few degrees above laughable and unbelievable. Same goes to descriptions of their "love-making" and the way he is a tiger, or a panther, or I don't know what that disturbing woman was describing him as. She is a neglected wife and the mother of two total a-holes who don't really care about her enough to even visit on her birthday. All she does is farm and serve her husband beers. That's exactly the type of woman an adventurous photographer, who's been around the entire globe, would fall for. Not.The writing is not any better than the characters. In the very first chapter, when Robert starts the journey which will eventually lead him to Francesca, the author lists the things Kincaid puts in his car - one by one. And lest we forget, two lines down Robert does a mental list of the very same things. Then every time his car, Harry, is mentioned, there is again a list of everything that's in it. Every time. And when Francesca reminisces about him, she also thinks about the stuff in his car. First world problems, people!
What do You think about The Bridges Of Madison County (1995)?
In 1993, this novel topped the Bestselling Novels List in the US. Why? Check the others in the lists around that time. They were novels by Stephen King, John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Daniel Steele and Robert Ludlum. It reminded me when in 2001, the soulful operatic voice of John Groban made his first waves in the music industry. The market was then dominated by the likes of Limkin Park, Eminem, Avril Lavigne, Nelly and Shakira. On that same year the simple, acoustic yet heartfelt song Pagdating ng Panahon by Aiza Seguerra topped the Best-Selling Albums list in the local music industry leaving by miles the likes of belter Regine Velasquez and the local bands Parokya ni Edgar and Eraserheads.The Bridges of Madison County is a sensitive simple tragic love story. Yet it is not overbearing, cheesy nor mushy. It is a story of Francesca/Frannie, a lonely (but not sex-starved) housewife who did not think that at the age of 45, in just 4 short days, she would find her one true love. The man, Robert Kinkaid, a 52-y/o divorced travelling photographer also felt the same for her. What happened on those 4 days: each moment, each sight, each word, each action, each kiss, each time their bodies touched... they carried with them as treasured secret memories for 22 years living their own separate livesThe narration is simple, poetic yet effective and incandescent. Each sentence is carefully worded and you cannot help notice some symbolisms. By design, Waller knew what he wanted: a simple yet heartfelt love story maybe to differentiate his work from the horrors of Stephen King, courtroom dramas of John Grisham or the espionage adventures of Robert Ludlum. One can likened The Bridges of Madison County to the description of the tune Robert's friend composed for him after Robert told him Francesca's story: I wanted to keep it simple, elegant. Complex things are easy to do. Simplicity's the real challenge.Like my favorite novel at all times, Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Sometimes, we don't need a complicated story to be happy with what we read. Sometimes, a simple yet sensible heartwarming story is what we need to cuddle ourselves in bed on a cold October night.
—K.D. Absolutely
This is easily the worst book ever written, but that's exactly why I love it. It's so appallingly, endearingly awful that the florid sappy phrases never fail to make me laugh until I cry. 'I am the highway and a peregrine and all the sails that ever went to sea.' You were right. That's what you feel, you feel the road inside of you. No, more than that, in a way that I'm not certain I can explain, you are the road. In the crack where illusion meets reality, that's where you are, out there on the road, and the road is you." As the sappy song goes, "When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I'm feeling bad," I can reach for Robert James Waller and bingo, I invariably feel better. Every time!
—Sandy Brown
Some may look askance at my 5-star rating. Behold, from the chapter "The Highway and the Peregrine":"Robert, when we were making love last night, you said something that I still remember. I kept whispering to you about your power -- and, my God, you have that. You said, 'I am the highway and a peregrine and all the sails that ever went to sea.' You were right. That's what you feel, you feel the road inside of you. No, more than that, in a way that I'm not certain I can explain, you are the road. In the crack where illusion meets reality, that's where you are, out there on the road, and the road is you."You're old knapsacks and a truck named Harry and jet airplanes to Asia. And that's what I want you to be. If your evolutionary branch is a dead end, as you say it is, then I want you to hit that end at full speed. I'm not sure you can do that with me along. Don't you see, I love you so much that I cannot think of restraining you for a moment. To do that would be to kill the wild, magificent animal that is you, and the power would die with it."Boo-ya. That just happened.Robert James Waller is to writing what Siegried and Roy are to stage performance, what William Shatner is to acting, what Margaret Keane is to painting. God, I love him.
—Gus
