Bridge of San Luis Rey

Bridge of San Luis Rey
by Thornton Wilder

3 of 5

I'm sure that I could be stoned to death by a bunch of latte-drinking intellectuals for giving this Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel 3 stars, but I don't care. I bet San Luis Rey was amazing when it was written in 1927, but I have seen so many variations on this theme (a group of seemingly unrelated people die in a tragic accident and their lives are explored through flashbacks) that it fell flat. Wilder is a writer's writer, a craftsman, and that makes the book worth reading; little tidbits, like, "There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but there may never be two that love one another equally well." kept me going.