In Homer's Shadow: Bridge of Clay

Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

Picador

Pp. 579

It has been highly publicised how long it took Markus Zusak to write this book, and the implication is always that it means a lot to him and is a labour of love. That is entirely understandable, but, at almost 600 pages, it reads as if he doesn’t know where to start, or finish, or even what to say.

The novel revolves around five boys growing up in a semi-rural suburb in New South Wales. Their mother, Penelope, died a long slow death from cancer and their father, Michael, abandoned them to deal with his grief alone. He returns asking for assistance to build a bridge so that he can get to and from his remote dwelling place on an island. Metaphor, much? Most of the boys refuse outright to help, but Clay offers to go with him, although he knows this will involve a severe beating at the hands or fists of his brothers when he comes home.

The oldest boy, Matthew, narrates the story, although he claims it belongs to Clay. The boys are hard to tell apart because they don’t do anything demonstrably different from each other – they all fight and drop out of school. Matthew tells us about them, rather than allowing their actions to individualise them. Thus we learn that he is the breadwinner of the family (although we are not exactly sure what he does; is he a labourer?), Rory is the biggest bruiser who likes a drink, Henry likes 80s films, and Tommy collects animals: a cat (Hector), a goldfish (Agamemnon), a pigeon (Telemachus), a cat (Hector) and a mule (Achilles).

Clay (he of the bridge building) is the quiet one. He is in training, although it is not specified for what. He runs a lot and fights. He also has a relationship with a young jockey, Carey (they live by a racetrack), which seems to involve them lying on an old mattress and him being tickled by her hair. They give each other cryptic gifts (a lighter; a broken peg; an old book) and speak in what are presumably meant to be deep aphorisms, but sound like the bits S.E. Hinton thought were too naff for one of her Young Adult novels. Incidentally, this is the first of Zusak’s novels to be promoted as general fiction rather than for young adults. The distinction appears to be length rather than content, as the general world of the teenage boys is no grittier than the setting of The Book Thief.

As the names might suggest, this is clearly meant to be an homage to Homer. The boys’ mother, Penelope Lesciuszko is a refugee from Europe, impelled by her father, Waldek, to escape the tyranny of totalitarianism. Her imagination has been formed by the 39 books Waldek owns, especially his copies of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Homeric epithets may work in epic poetry but the same descriptors (clear-eyed Cary Novak; warm-armed Claudia Kirkby), sonorous syntax and sentence length are tiresome in this novel.

Zusak plays with chronology, suggesting that nothing is straightforward, but the segments (each headed with font that looks as though it was typed on an old typewriter, as we are led to believe it was) are very short – often not more than a couple of paragraphs – and it is sometimes hard to tell where we are in the story. The Odyssey was spoken aloud and passed on to other narrators; Bridge of Clay simply has a number of unnecessary tricks which pall far too fast. Each statement is written as a new line, and the foreshadowing is overbearing.

“After all, Penelope would die.

Michael would leave.

And I, of course, would stay.

Before any of that could happen, though, he would teach me and train me for Hartnell.

This was going to be great.”

The narrative seems needlessly convoluted in structure merely to create suspense by with-holding information. One reviewer described it as ‘Bridge of Delay’, and the revelations are not worth the wait – Michael is described as The Murderer for several hundred pages before it becomes clear that his ‘crime’ was to leave the boys after his wife died. By this time I am past caring. When Matthew tells the story of Penelope and Michael (and Abbey, the woman Michael loved before he met Penelope), the novel is interesting. They met when Penelope’s piano was wrongly delivered to Michael’s house. He writes ‘Please Marry Me’ on the keys, and long after their presence has gone from the house, the faded writing on the notes reverberates as the piano remains as one of those resounding symbols Zusak so enjoys.

Clay is interested in his parents’ pre-occupations, including their obsession with Michelangelo and building. The brief chapters on the bridge-building could be interesting but they are crushed beneath the weight of their own metaphor. We learn more about how manly (stupid?) they are as they dig out earth and rocks with their bare hands and sleep under the stars in the riverbed. All too soon we are back to the rest of the family with their fighting and inarticulate relationships.

Matthew writes, “It’s a mystery, even to me sometimes, how boys and brothers love.” Despite the lengthy story presented here, it remains a mystery to me too. As annoying teenagers used to say, ‘build a bridge and get over it’. I loved The Book Thief. I shall remember Zusak as the author of that and put this down to an over-engineered folly.