The Bridge (novel)
LC Class | PR6052.A485 B75 1997 | |
The Bridge is a novel by Scottish author Iain Banks. It was published in 1986. The book switches between three protagonists, John Orr, Alex, and the Barbarian. It is an unconventional love story.
Plot summary
"The road cleared the cutting through the hills. He could see
old rail bridge’s hollow metal bones looked the colour of dried blood.
You fucking beauty, he thought . . . What a gorgeous great device you are. So delicate from this distance, so massive and strong close-up. Elegance and grace; perfect form. A quality bridge; granite piers, the best ship-plate steel, and a never-ending paint job..."
The three main characters represent different elements of the protagonist. Alex (full name hinted to be Alexander Lennox, but never explicitly named), John Orr and The Barbarian are one.
Alex is a real person, born in Glasgow, who studied geology and engineering at the
"He glanced back at the roadway of the bridge as it rose slowly to its gentle, suspended summit. The surface was a little damp, but nothing to worry about. No problems. He wasn’t going all that fast anyway, staying in the nearside lane, looking over at the rail bridge downstream. A light winked at the far end of the island under the rail bridge’s middle-section. One day, though, even you’ll be gone. Nothing lasts. Maybe that’s what I want to tell her. Maybe I want to say, No, of course I don’t mind; you must go. I can’t grudge the man that; you’d have done the same for me and I would for you. Just a pity, that’s all. Go; we’ll all survive. Maybe some good-
He was aware of the truck in front pulling out suddenly. He looked round to see a car in front of him. It was stopped, abandoned in the nearside lane. He sucked his breath in, stamped on the brakes, tried to swerve; but it was too late."
John Orr is an amnesiac living on the Bridge, a fictional version of the rail bridge, of indeterminate length but at least hundreds of miles long and packed with people.
The Barbarian is an id-ish warrior with a superego-esque familiar in tow (phallic symbolism is referenced by the familiar within a few pages of their first appearance) whose hack-and slash antics through various parodies of Greek legends and fairy tales are phonetically rendered in Scots dialect (seven years before Irvine Welsh used the technique in Trainspotting). The Barbarian (along with his loquacious familiar) are a deep expression of Alex's character; when Orr's dreams are not themed around threat and opposition he dreams he is the Barbarian.
The Barbarian appears to be an expression of Alex's deepest feelings. A woman is his enemy in their first appearance (Metamorphosis, Four), showing how Andrea Cramond has made her influence felt in Alex's very core, and how his love for her has been eroded and has transmuted into anger and contempt through the rift that has opened in their relationship.
In their second appearance (Metamorphosis, Four), a female character is mentioned in passing, with a certain level of affection.
The third appearance of the Barbarian and familiar (Metamorphosis, Pliocene) sees them old, decrepit, bed-bound and heading inevitably towards death. In each successive chapter the Barbarian's Scottish accent becomes less and less pronounced, another indication of how far Alex has gone from his Glaswegian roots. The Barbarian talks of his grief over his dead wife and his memories of their life together. While comparisons have been drawn between
The Bridge is an unconventional love story; the characters eschew fidelity and barely see each other for years at a time, but they keep returning to each other. There is no marriage, no ring, no happy ever after, just the knowledge that their lives are so deeply entwined it would be difficult or impossible for them to break away from each other.
"You don't belong to her and she doesn't belong to you, but you're both part of each other; if she got up and left now and walked away and you never saw each other again for the rest of your lives, and you lived an ordinary waking life for another fifty years, even so on your deathbed you would know she was part of you."
The fate of Alex and Andrea is revealed in a passage in a later book, Complicity.
Literary significance & criticism
Banks said that of his novels, this was his personal favourite. "Definitely the intellectual of the family, it's the one that went away to University and got a first. I think The Bridge is the best of my books."[2]
Kafkaesque and multi-layered, it shares elements in common with his Culture books, even including mention of a knife missile late in the book. However, Banks stated "That one knife missile mention has been enough for purists to claim that, technically, The Bridge is a Culture novel. Tenuous, I'd say." Banks said that after this book, he felt his SF and non-SF work diverged.[3]
Allusions and symbolism
Some characters are allusions to persons involved in the construction of Forth Railway Bridge: Chief Engineer Arrol refers to the proprietor of the construction company,
Bibliography
- The Bridge, Iain Banks, London : Macmillan, 1986, ISBN 0-333-41285-0
References
- ^ "The Worlds of Iain Banks". Archived from the original on 3 May 2014. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
- ^ "The Books of Iain Banks - and Iain M Banks". Archived from the original on 9 May 2008.
- ^ "What's in an M (or) What a difference an M makes". Archived from the original on 28 September 2007.