clock This article was published more than  5 years ago

‘Bridge of Clay,’ by ‘Book Thief’ author Markus Zusak, was 20 years in the making

review of novel bridge of clay

Markus Zusak, the phenomenally popular Australian writer, worked on “Bridge of Clay” for two decades, essentially his whole adult life. Such perseverance is awe-inspiring but risky, for all the reasons this new novel makes plain.

The story — a full-throated paean to sibling affection — is about five brothers raising themselves as best they can. The narrator, Matthew, is just old enough to act as his brothers’ guardian in a town that expresses little concern for the well-being of these abandoned boys. Their house ripens into “a porridge of mess and fighting,” something between a locker room and a barnyard, where a mule has free rein of the kitchen. “Many considered us tearaways. Barbarians,” Matthew says. “We swore like bastards, fought like contenders, and punished each other.”

Zusak pours unbridled joy and chaotic violence into this house with its scrum of boys. But just below the surface of all that adolescent male vitality run crosscurrents of anger and misery. These kids lost their mother, Penelope, after a three-year battle with cancer. Their shattered father wandered off for good. The boys refer to him, when they speak of him at all, as the murderer — the man who killed them. “What we were,” Matthew says, “there’s nothing left.”

“Bridge of Clay” opens several years after that tragedy when their errant father returns for a brief visit. He wants to know whether any of them will help build a bridge in the old-fashioned style, by hand, without mortar. The brothers are incensed, but one of them, Clay, agrees to drop out of high school and work on this labor in the wilderness. So begins the tale of an obsessive partnership, an act of construction and reconciliation — a bridge across a river and a span across shared grief.

Zusak has created the voice of a man desperate to get everything down in his own raw poetic phrases. Matthew tells us he’s pounding out this story on an old typewriter he dug up in the yard, and earthiness still clings to his sentences. He sports a bold, unabashedly romantic tone, an attitude long nurtured by his mother’s fondness for the adventures of “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad.” Ranging across the decades, he describes his childhood — “the last vestiges of youngness and dumbness” — along with all he’s been told about his parents’ storied past and the horrible truth he learned only later. The result is a collage of charming, bracing and scarring moments in the tumultuous history of a once happy family.

Some of these incidents are complex, absorbing subplots, while others are precise, gutting vignettes from hospice, as when the toughest brother, Rory, “with the scrap-metal eyes,” suddenly looks up from the Monopoly board and asks, “What’ll we do without her?” Matthew can barely keep from crumbling in the face of “that look, so afraid, so despairing, and the words, like a boy in pieces.”

But despite how widely the novel wanders, Matthew’s real focus is Clay, the brother who bore the loss of their parents the hardest. Always quiet and sensitive, he developed into a taciturn, cruelly self-disciplined teenager. His devotion to running seems masochistic, and the same determination fuels his dedication to the bridge. He has become so saddled with sorrow that only the agony of physical labor — or, possibly, the satisfaction of making something perfect — can blot it out.

In Matthew’s telling, Clay is graced with Homeric greatness, tinged with mythic prowess and affliction. “His heartbeat stung in the stillness,” he says. “There was fire in each of his eyes.” It would all be too corny if Clay’s agony weren’t so visceral and Matthew’s affection weren’t so pure.

There’s much to love about this capacious novel, but there’s also so much . In addition to its obvious symbolic weight, the story feels freighted with those two decades of rewriting and revising. Clay’s bridge may be a creation of elegant utility, but “Bridge of Clay” is an extravagantly overengineered story. The burden of that excess is exacerbated by Zusak’s decision to scramble the chronology of events. Admittedly, this is sometimes effective, as when chapters about Penelope’s escape from Eastern Europe as a girl are interlaced with chapters about her life as a mother of five. But elsewhere, the narrative feels jumbled merely to jack up suspense by endlessly postponing some essential revelation. I began to think of it as “Bridge of Delay.” The book’s elliptical structure self-consciously withholds information — names, meanings and motives; stray objects are introduced but not explained for hundreds of pages. These are tricks that Zusak simply doesn’t need to keep us engaged.

Around the world, “Bridge of Clay” is being released as a novel for adults, but in the United States it’s being published by Knopf Books for Young Readers, which gives me pause. Zusak has said he doesn’t worry about categories; he merely wanted to stay with the same staff at the U.S. imprint that brought out his 2005 blockbuster, “The Book Thief.” But how books are categorized, packaged and marketed does matter, and I hope this mature novel doesn’t end up boring teens without finding the older readers who will love it. Because overstuffed as it is, “Bridge of Clay” is one of those monumental books that can draw you across space and time into another family’s experience in the most profound way.

Ron Charles writes about books for The Washington Post and hosts TotallyHipVideoBookReview.com .

Bridge of Clay

By Markus Zusak

Knopf Books for Young Readers. 544 pp. $26.

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

review of novel bridge of clay

Profile Picture

  • ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

avatar

BRIDGE OF CLAY

by Markus Zusak ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 9, 2018

Much like building a bridge stone by stone, this read requires painstaking effort and patience.

Years after the death of their mother, the fourth son in an Australian family of five boys reconnects with his estranged father.

Matthew Dunbar dug up the old TW, the typewriter his father buried (along with a dog and a snake) in the backyard of his childhood home. He searched for it in order to tell the story of the family’s past, a story about his mother, who escaped from Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall; about his father, who abandoned them all after their mother’s death; about his brother Clay, who built a bridge to reunite their family; and about a mule named Achilles. Zusak ( The Book Thief , 2006, etc.) weaves a complex narrative winding through flashbacks. His prose is thick with metaphor and heavy with allusions to Homer’s epics. The story romanticizes Matthew and his brothers’ often violent and sometimes homophobic expressions of their cisgender, heterosexual masculinity with reflections unsettlingly reminiscent of a “boys will be boys” attitude. Women in the book primarily play the roles of love interests, mothers, or (in the case of their neighbor) someone to marvel at the Dunbar boys and give them jars to open. The characters are all presumably white.

Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-984830-15-9

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FAMILY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION

Share your opinion of this book

More by Markus Zusak

UNDERDOGS

BOOK REVIEW

by Markus Zusak

THE BOOK THIEF

From the Empirium Trilogy series , Vol. 2

by Claire Legrand ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 21, 2019

A very full mixed bag.

In the sequel to Furyborn (2018), Rielle and Eliana struggle across time with their powers and prophesied destinies.

Giving readers only brief recaps, this book throws them right into complicated storylines in this large, lovingly detailed fantasy world filled with multiple countries, two different time periods, and hostile angels. Newly ordained Rielle contends with villainous Corien’s interest in her, the weakening gate that holds the angels at bay, and distrust from those who don’t believe her to be the Sun Queen. A thousand years in the future, Eliana chafes under her unwanted destiny and finds her fear of losing herself to her powers (like the Blood Queen) warring with her need to save those close to her. The rigid alternation between time-separated storylines initially feels overstuffed, undermining tension, but once more characters get point-of-view chapters and parallels start paying off, the pace picks up. The multiethnic cast (human versus angelic is the only divide with weight) includes characters of many sexual orientations, and their romantic storylines include love triangles, casual dalliances, steady couples, and couples willing to invite in a third. While many of the physically intimate scenes are loving, some are rougher, including ones that cross lines of clear consent and introduce a level of violence that many young readers will not be ready for. The ending brings heartbreaking twists to prime readers for the trilogy’s conclusion.

Pub Date: May 21, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-4926-5665-4

Page Count: 608

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION

More In The Series

LIGHTBRINGER

by Claire Legrand

FURYBORN

More by Claire Legrand

EXTASIA

by Claire Legrand ; illustrated by Jaime Zollars

MY EYES ARE UP HERE

MY EYES ARE UP HERE

by Laura Zimmermann ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 23, 2020

A sweet, slow-paced novel about a teen learning to love her body.

Greer Walsh wishes she were one person...unfortunately, with her large breasts, she feels like she’s actually three.

High school sophomore and math whiz Greer is self-conscious about her body. Maude and Mavis, as she’s named her large breasts, are causing problems for her. When Greer meets new kid Jackson Oates, she wishes even more that she had a body that she didn’t feel a need to hide underneath XXL T-shirts. While trying to impress Jackson, who has moved to the Chicago suburbs from Cleveland, Greer decides to try out for her school’s volleyball team. When she makes JV, Greer is forced to come to terms with how her body looks and feels in a uniform and in motion as well as with being physically close with her teammates. The story is told in the first person from Greer’s point of view. Inconsistent storytelling as well as Greer’s (somewhat distracting) personified inner butterfly make this realistic novel a slow but overall enjoyable read. The story contains elements of light romance as well as strong female friendships. Greer is white with a Christian mom and Jewish dad; Jackson seems to be white by default, and there is diversity among the secondary characters.

Pub Date: June 23, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-1524-8

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION

More by Laura Zimmermann

JUST DO THIS ONE THING FOR ME

by Laura Zimmermann

  • Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
  • News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
  • Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
  • Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
  • Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
  • More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
  • About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Go To Top

Popular in this Genre

Close Quickview

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Sign in with Google

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

  • Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

review of novel bridge of clay

comscore

Bridge of Clay review: Slow-paced novel is both masterful and tedious

Markus zusak’s rich characterisation is dragged down by overwrought style.

review of novel bridge of clay

Markus Zusak: latest novel has many of his stylistic tics: staccato description, choppy narrative, and sometimes poetic features of syntax and imagery. Photograph: Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

Bridge of Clay

This is a story about "how before-the-beginnings are everywhere". A family drama, Bridge of Clay begins with five boys – the Dunbar brothers – who are living in a house without adults. One day, their father comes back, and asks the second-oldest brother, Clayton ("Clay"), to help him build a bridge. Told by the eldest son, Zusak's novel seems to emulate the actions of memory: it is an elaborate puzzle, which jumps from timeline to timeline, over multiple decades, with a large cast of characters, throwing up scraps of information and backstory until, gradually, the narratives begin to coalesce.

Difficult to locate both in terms of time period and geography, the setting for the story seems to be Zusak’s homeland of Australia, though very little information is given away, which can be frustrating for a reader who wants to fully imagine a visual world for the characters. It is also often hard to tell which period of the narrative we are in at any given point: the segments can be as short as a paragraph or two. They come and go in a flash.

Bridge of Clay , in other words, requires a patience and concentration perhaps at odds with its easy narrative voice. The pace is very slow at times. There is never a sense that each part isn't necessary for the purpose of the story as a whole, but some of the segments are laborious to read, and some are overworked. In a particularly well-rendered and poignant scene between Michael, the "murderer-to-be", and his partner, Abbey, the relationship's breakdown is laid out in fine and distressing detail. Abbey's courage in speaking is given in heavy and beautifully strained speech. "The strength it took had weakened her, if only momentarily, and she slid back down upon him, her cheek like a stone on his neck." Unfortunately, that subtlety is undone by the following chapters, which hammer the point home too forcefully, killing the effect.

Syntax and imagery

Hotly awaited after the phenomenal success of The Book Thief , published in 2005, Zusak's novel has many of the stylistic tics of its predecessor: staccato description, choppy narrative, and sometimes poetic features of syntax and imagery. At times, Zusak turns a beautiful phrase – there are "marathons of sky", the light is "like a river mouth". At others, what seem like poetic phrases are in fact vague and somewhat showy – Rory, for example, "stood like a rumour", an image which seems like it means something but, upon closer inspection, really doesn't.

Zusak has the annoying habit of writing each statement as a new line. “I should tell you what we were like: / Many considered us tearaways. / Barbarians. / Mostly they were right: / Our mother was dead. / Our father had fled.” What starts off as a technique for emphasis very quickly becomes an annoying habit, a writerly quirk that, over the course of nearly 600 pages, becomes difficult to bear. Likewise, parts of the book feel self-consciously poetic in a way that snaps the reader out of the narrative. Full rhyme in a poem is difficult enough to pull off successfully, but in a novel, it’s even harder:

“Trying to recapture his resolve, he stood motionless, in this corridor of strapping eucalypts. He felt the pressure in his lungs: a sense of oncoming waves, though they were made now only of air. It took reminding to breathe them in.

Out here somewhere was where waters led.

Out here somewhere was where murderers fled.”

Self-congratulatory rhymes

The crisp imagery of the prose descriptions is undermined by the self-congratulatory end-rhyming of the final two sentences. Zusak’s rhyming, here, is emblematic of a more general tendency to break every narrative into small paragraphs or sections, and to end each of these with an apparently telling or teasing line: “Until now”; “We loved what you did next”; “In months ahead, she would push too soon.” This sense of trying to intrigue the reader, to draw them through the narrative, begins to feel like a prolonged delay of information, and risks losing us before the stories of Zusak’s novel begin to fall into place.

Delayed gratification, in fact, is quite typical of Bridge of Clay , which on occasion falls into place in spectacular style and effect, bringing Zusak's masterly skill for characterisation to the fore. Sometimes tedious, at other times masterful, this isn't a novel destined for the success that met The Book Thief , though, if you have the patience, it's worth sticking around for.

Seán Hewitt

Seán Hewitt, a contributor to The Irish Times, is a teacher, poet and critic

IN THIS SECTION

How i turned my book the making of mollie into a play – with a little help from some young innovators, the lodgers by holly pester: a smart, superbly crafted story on the state of a nation, after a dance by bridget o’connor: riotous stories set in grimy irish london, empireworld by sathnam sanghera: an important antidote to britain’s allergy regarding its past, chris agee: ‘i never considered my writing after my daughter’s death as therapeutic. nor did i find it difficult’, mexico’s sinaloa cartel created an irish network to aid large movement of drugs, gardaí believe, summer jobs in childhood can come back to bite at pension time, ‘i think i would be happier as a single man, but despair at the thoughts of a messy separation’, limerick crash: teenager and man (20s) killed after car hits wall, temperatures set to drop to zero as some snow and sleet expected later in week, latest stories, adhd may have been an evolutionary advantage, research suggests, ambitious gaa integration plan faces several challenges, ruby franke, parenting advice youtuber, jailed for child abuse, alexei navalny death: russian ambassador to ireland is summoned by department of foreign affairs.

Book Club

  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Information
  • Cookie Settings
  • Community Standards
  • For Parents
  • For Educators
  • Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

  • Movie Reviews
  • Best Movie Lists
  • Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

review of novel bridge of clay

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

review of novel bridge of clay

  • Best TV Lists
  • Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
  • Common Sense Selections for TV
  • Video Reviews of TV Shows

review of novel bridge of clay

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

review of novel bridge of clay

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

  • Book Reviews
  • Best Book Lists
  • Common Sense Selections for Books

review of novel bridge of clay

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

review of novel bridge of clay

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

  • Game Reviews
  • Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

  • Video Reviews of Games

review of novel bridge of clay

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

review of novel bridge of clay

  • Podcast Reviews
  • Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

review of novel bridge of clay

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

review of novel bridge of clay

  • App Reviews
  • Best App Lists

review of novel bridge of clay

Social Networking for Teens

review of novel bridge of clay

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

review of novel bridge of clay

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

  • YouTube Channel Reviews
  • YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

review of novel bridge of clay

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

review of novel bridge of clay

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

  • Preschoolers (2-4)
  • Little Kids (5-7)
  • Big Kids (8-9)
  • Pre-Teens (10-12)
  • Teens (13+)
  • Screen Time
  • Social Media
  • Online Safety
  • Identity and Community

review of novel bridge of clay

Explaining the News to Our Kids

  • Family Tech Planners
  • Digital Skills
  • All Articles
  • Latino Culture
  • Black Voices
  • Asian Stories
  • Native Narratives
  • LGBTQ+ Pride
  • Best of Diverse Representation List

review of novel bridge of clay

Celebrating Black History Month

review of novel bridge of clay

Movies and TV Shows with Arab Leads

review of novel bridge of clay

Celebrate Hip-Hop's 50th Anniversary

Bridge of clay, common sense media reviewers.

review of novel bridge of clay

Expansive, touching saga of Aussie family's losses, loves.

Bridge of Clay Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

Frequent references to ancient myths, especially T

Love and sticking together through thick and thin

The Dunbar boys are flawed, but each has a good he

Brothers fight one another frequently, sometimes i

Romance, love, dating feature heavily. Boys discus

Characters swear somewhat frequently, including, "

References to movies and some board games, includi

Rory is shown after heavy drinking several times.

Parents need to know that Bridge of Clay, by Markus Zusak ( The Book Thief ), is about five Australian boys raising themselves after their mother's death and their father's subsequent abandonment of them. The story delves into the individual histories of many of the characters, spanning decades and…

Educational Value

Frequent references to ancient myths, especially The Odyssey and The Iliad . Information on the Pont du Gard, a Roman-built aqueduct in France. Details on horse racing. Some references to Michelangelo's work and personal history.

Positive Messages

Love and sticking together through thick and thin are major themes. Always leave room in your heart for forgiveness. You never fully know what other people are going through, even those closest to you. Spend time with your loved ones, sharing and listening to family histories. Sometimes you have to put aside your hurt feelings and be the one to reach out and mend problems.

Positive Role Models

The Dunbar boys are flawed, but each has a good heart, a lot of love for family. Clay especially shows deep empathy and concern for others. Carey is strong and smart, and she's an understanding and caring friend to Clay. Penny Dunbar is a wonderful, loving mother and wife. Michael Dunbar leaves his family, but he has many good qualities that come to light. Most secondary characters are good, caring people.

Violence & Scariness

Brothers fight one another frequently, sometimes in fun, sometimes anger. Lots of roughhousing among the boys. Clay engages in violent races, where others try to knock him down, keep him from crossing finish line. One car-crash scene with broken bones, blood. A father raps his daughter's knuckles when she makes mistakes on the piano. Mom paddles kids with a wooden spoon. Boy gets into serious, bloody fistfight at school. Some verbal anti-gay bullying.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Romance, love, dating feature heavily. Boys discuss women's bodies and looks; they pass around a Playboy magazine. Some kissing and sex, but none of it described graphically -- it's more referenced than shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Characters swear somewhat frequently, including, "s--t," "bastard," "goddamn," "f--k," "pr--k," "Jesus," "bulls--t," "hell," "God," "Christ," "bitch," "t-ts," "balls," "piss," and "Jesus Christ." Also some Australian swearing, including "bloody," "bugger," and "arsehole."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

References to movies and some board games, including Bachelor Party , The Goonies , Chariots of Fire , Gallipoli, Mad Max , Monopoly, Connect Four, and Sorry.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Rory is shown after heavy drinking several times. Penny and Michael have a beer or a drink a few times. Penny takes the whole family for a pint at the pub before she dies, even her underage kids. Parents shown smoking cigarettes a few times.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Bridge of Clay, by Markus Zusak ( The Book Thief ), is about five Australian boys raising themselves after their mother's death and their father's subsequent abandonment of them. The story delves into the individual histories of many of the characters, spanning decades and unearthing family secrets. Loss and love are the major themes, giving families much to discuss about the different ways people handle grief and tough times. The five Dunbar boys are rowdy, swear a bit ("bastard," "f--k," "s--t," "goddamn"), and frequently physically fight one another. Rory, one of the brothers, drinks heavily at times. Romantic relationships feature prominently in the story, but scenes of kissing and sex are not described graphically.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

  • Parents say (4)
  • Kids say (4)

Based on 4 parent reviews

Language ruined it. Junk. Didn’t add any value.

One of the best books i ever read,, what's the story.

BRIDGE OF CLAY tells the story of the five rough-and-tumble, parentless Dunbar brothers and their struggle to raise themselves, focusing primarily on the life and hardships of the fourth boy, Clay. Though the building of a physical bridge is an essential plot point, the real story is much more about the building of metaphorical bridges between family, friends, and generations. The narrative moves back and forth in time, covering the young years of Penny and Michael Dunbar, the boys' parents; the missing parents in every generation; courtships; illnesses; family love and fights; and a few deeply buried secrets. Each step of the way, characters wonder how they will get through life, given the roadblocks they frequently encounter. When Penny dies, Michael walks out of his children's lives without a word. He slips away emotionally at first, then physically leaves them on their own. More tragedy strikes, and Clay and his brothers grapple with guilt, memories, and how to be there for one another no matter what else may come.

Is It Any Good?

Themes of loss, grief, and love reverberate across the generations of an Australian family in this sweeping, poetic novel from Markus Zusak. Bridge of Clay is slow to start and scattered at times. The story jumps around in time, with flashbacks within memories, making it occasionally hard to follow. The writing is beautiful in spots, and Zusak fans will find much of the flowery (and sometimes ponderous) prose they love him for.

The five Dunbar boys are easy to like. Their love for each other jumps off the page, and their interactions are endearing. Clay, especially, is a wonderful, interesting, and complex character. The novel is best when it's tackling issues of loss, memory, and how grief is different for everybody, even within the same family. The loss of parents and the way it affects those left behind for the rest of their lives form the basis of the story, as everyone in the Dunbar family has lost at least one parent, either to death, emigration, or abandonment. While the daily lives of all the Dunbars, especially their relationships inside and outside the family, are portrayed in great detail, some of the big and important plot reveals are depicted in a vague, confusing way. The story would benefit from tighter pacing and better explanation of the plot surprises, but as it is, many readers are sure to fall in love with the Dunbar boys and their fierce ways of loving one another and preserving their family history.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about books and movies that jump back and forth in time, like Bridge of Clay . Do you find this an interesting way to tell a story? Why or why not? Do you ever get confused when reading books or watching movies that use this technique?

How do you feel about stories centered on the loss of parents? Is it interesting to you to see how different characters deal with such a huge loss? Does it help you empathize with people you know who have experienced this kind of loss?

Do you have any coping mechanisms or things you like to do to take your mind off your troubles? Such as running, painting, writing, or other hobbies?

Book Details

  • Author : Markus Zusak
  • Genre : Coming of Age
  • Topics : Book Characters , Brothers and Sisters , Friendship , Great Boy Role Models , Great Girl Role Models , High School
  • Book type : Fiction
  • Publisher : Knopf Books for Young Readers
  • Publication date : October 9, 2018
  • Publisher's recommended age(s) : 13 - 18
  • Number of pages : 544
  • Available on : Nook, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
  • Last updated : April 6, 2020

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

The Book Thief Poster Image

The Book Thief

Want personalized picks for your kids' age and interests?

The Square Root of Summer

Gem & Dixie Poster Image

Gem & Dixie

The Last to Let Go Poster Image

The Last to Let Go

Books about families, historical fiction, related topics.

  • Book Characters
  • Brothers and Sisters
  • Great Boy Role Models
  • Great Girl Role Models
  • High School

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

  • Member Login
  • Library Patron Login

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR

FREE NEWSLETTERS

Search: Title Author Article Search String:

Bridge of Clay : Book summary and reviews of Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

Summary | Reviews | More Information | More Books

Bridge of Clay

by Markus Zusak

Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

Critics' Opinion:

Readers' rating:

Published Oct 2018 544 pages Genre: Literary Fiction Publication Information

Rate this book

About this book

Book summary.

An unforgettable and sweeping family saga from Markus Zusak.

The breathtaking story of five brothers who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. As the Dunbar boys love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world, they discover the moving secret behind their father's disappearance. At the center of the Dunbar family is Clay, a boy who will build a bridge - for his family, for his past, for greatness, for his sins, for a miracle. The question is, how far is Clay willing to go? And how much can he overcome? Written in powerfully inventive language and bursting with heart, Bridge of Clay is signature Zusak.

  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Media Reviews

Reader reviews.

BookBrowse Review "Markus Zusak's first novel since his best-selling The Book Thief , left me feeling exasperated and at times utterly bored. While Bridge of Clay possesses a compelling, breezy narrative voice that immediately draws you in, this tale of five Australian brothers reconnecting with their estranged father is too often meandering and sluggish. Furthermore, its fragmentary style (with chapters broken into small scenes that only last a few paragraphs) never allows you to fully settle into the story and will surely test many a reader's patience. Despite some excellent, lyrical prose this is a novel that would have greatly benefited from an unsparing edit." - Dean Muscat Other Reviews "Starred Review. With heft and historical scope, Zusak creates a sensitively rendered tale of loss, grief, and guilt's manifestations." - Publishers Weekly "Starred Review. Zusak pushes the parameters of YA in this gorgeously written novel: a character has scrap-metal eyes; rain is like a ghost you could walk through. In the end, it always comes back to Clay, that lovely boy, as a neighbor calls him. A lovely boy and an unforgettably lovely book to match." - Booklist

Author Information

  • Books by this Author

Markus Zusak Author Biography

review of novel bridge of clay

Photo © 2005 Bronwyn Rennex

Markus Zusak's novels include Fighting Ruben Wolfe , Getting The Girl , I Am The Messenger , The Book Thief and Bridge of Clay . He received the Children's Book Council of Australia's Book of the Year Award for I Am the Messenger . He lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and children.

Author Interview Link to Markus Zusak's Website

Other books by Markus Zusak at BookBrowse

The Book Thief jacket

More Recommendations

Readers also browsed . . ..

  • How to Build a Heart by Maria Padian
  • Saints of the Household by Ari Tison
  • The Lightness of Hands by Jeff Garvin
  • Like Home by Louisa Onome
  • Four for the Road by K J. Reilly
  • The Making of Yolanda la Bruja by Lorraine Avila
  • The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by Isaac Blum
  • Those Pink Mountain Nights by Jen Ferguson
  • Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour
  • The Silence that Binds Us by Joanna Ho

more YA literary fiction...

Support BookBrowse

Join our inner reading circle, go ad-free and get way more!

Find out more

Book Jacket: The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket

Members Recommend

Book Jacket

Strong Passions by Barbara Weisberg

Shocking revelations of a wife's adultery in 19th New York explode in an incendiary trial exposing the upper-crust and its secrets.

Book Jacket

The Adversary by Michael Crummey

An enthralling novel about a small town struggling to survive, and a bitter vendetta between two rivals.

Win This Book

Win The Cleaner

The Cleaner by Brandi Wells

Rarely has cubicle culture been depicted in such griminess or with such glee." — PW (starred review)

Solve this clue:

I Wouldn't T H W A T-F P

and be entered to win..

BookBrowse wins Platinum!

Your guide to exceptional           books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

Subscribe to receive some of our best reviews, "beyond the book" articles, book club info and giveaways by email.

Booklover Book Reviews

Booklover Book Reviews

Bridge of Clay, Review: Markus Zusak’s beguiling narrative

Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak is masterful in its capacity to move readers. An epic tale of normal people swimming against the flood of life. Read my full review.

Bridge of Clay  Synopsis

Bridge of Clay Review

Long-listed for Indie Book Awards Fiction 2019

Let me tell you about our brother. The fourth Dunbar boy named Clay. Everything happened to him. We were all of us changed through him.

The Dunbar boys bring each other up in a house run by their own rules. A family of ramshackle tragedy – their mother is dead, their father has fled – they love and fight, and learn to reckon with the adult world.

It is Clay, the quiet one, who will build a bridge; for his family, for his past, for his sins. He builds a bridge to transcend humanness. To survive.

A miracle and nothing less.

Markus Zusak makes his long-awaited return with a profoundly heartfelt and inventive novel about a family held together by stories, and a young life caught in the current: a boy in search of greatness, as a cure for a painful past.

( Pan Macmillan  (Picador Australia), October 2018)

Genre:  Action-Adventure, Drama, Mystery, Literature

Disclosure: If you click a link in this post and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission.

BOOK REVIEW

I adored Markus Zusak’s modern classic  The Book Thief . Its subject matter will hopefully never be repeated. And that novel’s mastery, it’s knife-edge balance of whimsy and gravitas was never going to be repeated. So the comparisons should, and in my review will stop there.

There is much to admire within Bridge of Clay , but like most novels nearing 600 pages, it also has its weaknesses.

The narrative voice and framing is unusual, and often oblique. Many readers have found that confusing, but I found it beguiling — I trusted the author and so was both a willing audience and participant — eager to marvel in the colour, intensity and heart imbued in the commonplace and accepting of the challenge being presented. And one should not underestimate the challenge, patience is required.

Poetic prose

The narrative lays down a series of puzzle pieces, in what at first seems to be no apparent order; shards of a broken vase that is the Dunbar boys’ lives. These shards are depicted in staccato yet artful and at times, quite literally, poetic prose.

… there was a sort of bashed-up quiet. The table was arid between father and sons, and a hell of a lot of toast crumbs. A pair of mismatched salt and pepper shakers stood in the middle, like some comedy duo. One portly, one tall.

The Wall Street Journal reviewer Meghan Cox Gurdon captured its essence, saying “In words that seem to ache with emotion, or perhaps, more aptly, with the suppression of it, Mr. Zusak moves us in and out of time.”

“We skip the moments like stones.” ― Markus Zusak, Bridge of Clay

On several occasions, I found myself more engaged by the writing style than the story being told. And even then, there were moments of too-much-of-a-good-thing within Bridge of Clay , and dare I say it decadent procrastination.

But what lingers longest in memory is this…  Bridge of Clay  is masterful in its capacity to move even the hardest of hearts, on not just one moment, but many that arise in this epic tale of normal people swimming against the flood of life. A standout for me was that of the immigrant experience, closely followed by the innate bond between animals and humans (even brothers).

Markus Zusak’s novel celebrates the strength of people at their most broken, the beauty of our scars and legacy of great loves and stories shared.

BOOK RATING:  The Story 4 / 5 ; The Writing 4 / 5

Get your copy of Bridge of Clay from:

Booktopia (AU) Book Depository Kobo Amazon Bookshop (US) OR listen to the audiobook FREE with Audible’s Trial (check eligibility)

“There are hundreds of thoughts per every word spoken, and that’s if they’re spoken at all.” ― Markus Zusak, Bridge of Clay

Which cover art do you prefer?

If you like the sound of Bridge of Clay , you may also enjoy reading: Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls  /   The Origin of Me by Bernard Gallate  /   Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon  /   Cloudstreet by Tim Winton  /   Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey

About the Author, Markus Zusak

Markus Zusak is the bestselling author of six novels, including The Book Thief and The Messenger . His books have been translated into more than forty languages, to both popular and critical acclaim . He lives in Sydney with his wife and two children.

Connect with Markus at his website and on Facebook .

Other Bridge of Clay Reviews

“Markus Zusak’s rich characterisation is dragged down by overwrought style.” — Irish Times

“If The Book Thief was a novel that allowed Death to steal the show, its slightly chaotic, overlong, though brilliantly illuminated follow-up is affirmatively full of life.” — TheGuardian

“ Bridge of Clay is a tender book, set in a world that is anything but. Its enormous ambitions are sustained by heartfelt beliefs, not least in the power of love. This vast novel is a feast of language and irony. There is sly wit on every page. ” —   Sydney Morning Herald

“Beautifully written and thought-provoking, Bridge of Clay will tug at your heartstrings; and at the essential core of the novel is the delightfully uplifting message that life tends to find a way to make things right in the end.” — New York Journal of Books

This review counts towards my participation in the Aussie Author Challenge 2018 and the 2018 New Release Challenge .

Share this:

A booklover with diverse reading interests, who has been reviewing books and sharing her views and opinions on this website and others since 2009.

The Straits Times

  • International
  • Print Edition
  • news with benefits
  • SPH Rewards
  • STClassifieds
  • Berita Harian
  • Hardwarezone
  • Shin Min Daily News
  • SRX Property
  • Tamil Murasu
  • The Business Times
  • The New Paper
  • Lianhe Zaobao
  • Advertise with us

Book review: Markus Zusak's Bridge Of Clay is moving and incredibly human

review of novel bridge of clay

  • BRIDGE OF CLAY

By Markus Zusak

Transworld Publishers/ Hardcover/ 592 pages/ Major bookstores/ $42.80

SINGAPORE - Markus Zusak's long-anticipated novel Bridge Of Clay is the story of an Australian family of "ramshackle tragedy... Our mother was dead./ Our father had fled."

These are the words of Matthew, the book's narrator and and the eldest of five sons in the Dunbar family. We are told that this is the story of his younger brother, Clay, but the book extends far beyond him, with a broad sweep across countries and generations.

The five Dunbar boys are a racuous bunch. Their mother is Penelope (Penny), who fled the Eastern Bloc and brought with her a love for Chopin and Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey.

When she dies, her husband Michael walks out on his family but later reconnects with them and builds a bridge across a dry riverbed with Clay.

Bridge Of Clay is a moving, incredibly human piece of work. And at nearly 600 pages, the novel - which took Zusak more than a decade to write - is also a baggy collection of character narratives and flashbacks. Here, as in life, memory is not linear but tangled and muddied. There is, of course, method to the book's seemingly haphazard structure.

Zusak is a supremely sensitive writer, and no image is out of place - be it the keys of Penny's piano or those of the bullet-grey Remington typewriter owned by Michael's mother.

By providing us with the backstories of Penny and Michael Dunbar, the narrator suggests that we are the sum total of not just our past experiences, but also our parents'. This is reflected in the novel's section headings, which are cumulative in nature - the eighth and final part is titled "cities + waters + criminals + arches + stories + survivors + bridges + FIRE".

If - and this is a big "if" - the reader manages to get through the story's rather bewildering early pages, she will find herself in spellbinding territory. The chapters devoted to Penelope's exit from Eastern Europe, and Michael's ill-starred relationship with his first wife Abbey are particularly heart-wrenching.

"He remembered times when the entire Friday-night cinema laughed, when he'd laughed, and Abbey sat watching, unfazed," writes Matthew, charting the disintegration of this love affair. "Then, when the whole brigade of movie-goers was dead-silent, Abbey would smile at something private, just her and the screen. If only he could have laughed when she did, maybe they'd have been okay."

Bridge Of Clay may be a long read, but it is worlds apart from the maximalist fictions of great male narcissists such as David Foster Wallace.

While it won't be the most exciting thing you read this year, there is something to be said for Zusak's generosity as a writer, the novel's emotional elegance and its portrayal of the forces that shape our ends.

If you liked this, read: The Book Thief (Transworld Publishers, 2005, $17.76, Books Kinokuniya), Zusak's bestselling novel, set in Nazi Germany, where Death narrates the story of a girl called Liesel .

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.

  • Book review

Read 3 articles and stand to win rewards

Spin the wheel now

  • International edition
  • Australia edition
  • Europe edition

Australian author Markus Zusak

Markus Zusak on how Bridge of Clay left him 'beaten up and bruised'

If The Book Thief is the Australian author’s most famous book, this is his magnum opus

On a recent Sydney morning, the author Markus Zusak sat down to write at his kitchen table. Then, out of nowhere, came the sound of some very loud munching.

He looked up to see his daughter Kitty eating cereal. “Are you all right over there?” he called out. “I’m trying to get some work done here!”

She paused, raised her eyebrows, and looked at him aghast. “You? Work?”

Kitty had a point. Zusak may be one of Australia’s bestselling authors. But during her and her brother Noah’s lifetimes (they are 12 and 9 respectively), Zusak had never released a book. Indeed, his latest novel to hit the shelves – Bridge of Clay – took a whopping 13 years to write.

Yet for someone who suffered from years of severe writer’s block – not to mention endless revisions, rewritings, and reworkings which, he told Fairfax , “became like an addiction” – Zusak remains remarkably cheerful.

“Sure, I’m beaten up and bruised,” says Zusak, pouring a cup of peppermint tea in a Surry Hills cafe. “But I kind of love that as well because it’s self-inflicted. I love that it’s not easy.”

Australian author Markus Zusak

Released in Australia in October, and in the UK and US last month, Bridge of Clay is a sprawling Australian family saga, focusing on five brothers abandoned when their mother dies and their father disappears. That is until the father returns and asks his sons to travel to a property in the bush to build a bridge – a literal and metaphorical way of making amends. Only one boy agrees. Clay.

It is, according to Pan Macmillan, the “most anticipated book of the decade” – and not without reason. The Book Thief , Zusak’s smash hit, spent over 10 years on the New York Times bestseller list, has been translated into 40 languages, sold 16 million copies, and was made into a major motion picture starring Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson. For the past 13 years Zusak was able to survive – supporting two kids and his wife Dominika, who manages his authorial administration and appearances - on royalties alone.

But if The Book Thief is his most famous book, Bridge of Clay is his magnum opus. Zusak, now 43, was just 20 years old when he first came up with the concept. All these years later, he still speaks of the moment dreamily: “I thought of a boy building a bridge and he wanted to make this one beautiful, great, perfect thing.”

Clay, of course, is laden with meaning: objects can be moulded from the cold, wet material, but to retain their shape they need to be set with fire. And while Clay the character pours his life into his bridge, Zusak has poured his life into the novel. “That book is made up of pretty much everything in me – that book’s everything I’ve got,” he says.

Much like Tim Winton’s epic Cloudstreet, it is also a celebration of Australia, of the importance of the ordinary, the everyday and, above all, of suburbia. “I like the idea that we think we live these dull suburban lives, but they’re also big lives: we all fall in love, we have people die on us, we all have big arguments in the kitchen. I wanted to write that book which portrayed a suburban richness and wealth.”

Although he now lives in a townhouse in Woollahra , in Sydney’s exclusive eastern suburbs, Zusak – who is polite, modest, and talks with idealistic wonder about the power of books – grew up in the more suburban south of the city. The youngest of four children of immigrant parents – his father is Austrian, his mother German – he was raised speaking German and English.

“Sydney is so much a part of my own story,” says Zusak. “Even the idea that my mum and dad came here with nothing. We start being who we are before we’re born. There are a lot of stories that lead to our very existence. I wanted to pay attention to those things.”

Zusak’s parents grew up during the second world war. Their experiences inspired The Book Thief, a tale of Nazi Germany, filled with suffering and told from the perspective of the narrator Death.

One story in particular hit home. As a child, Zusak’s mother often stopped to watch farmers herd animals down the main street in the small town outside Munich where she lived. One day, it wasn’t animals but people who were being herded: Jews being driven to Dachau.

“And there was an old man who couldn’t keep up – and he was so emaciated he could hardly walk anymore,” Zusak says. “A teenage boy ran into his house and returned with a loaf of bread to give to him. He fell by his knees and grabbed the boy by the feet and cried into his ankles and thanked the boy for the bread. Then a soldier came and threw the bread to the streets, and whipped the man and the boy.”

It sounds like a fable or fairytale. And it is that simplistic quality – of good and evil – that appealed to Zusak. “One is the beauty of the old man and the boy. Then you’ve got the pure evil of that regime in what happens with the soldier. You bring those two things together and you’ve got exactly what humans are capable of.”

On other days, his mother would tell him how she would emerge blinking out of a bomb shelter into the light to find the earth covered by ice and a sky lit by fire.

Such powerful images appear in The Book Thief, where Death thinks in colours; not of scorched red but of blinding white, an unforgiving caustic razor-blade that also finds its way into Bridge of Clay, where the “aspirin-white” Sydney sunlight is far from nourishing.

Markus Zusak’s Bridge of Clay

Hope in The Book Thief comes in the form of Liesel Meminger, a girl who lives with foster parents and who pilfers books.

“Even now, after all those years, the hardest question is what the book is about,” muses Zuzak. “It took about five or six years [for me to realise] the book is about the idea that Hitler destroyed through words and propaganda. And this is the story of a girl who is stealing those words back.”

The Book Thief features a boxer, 24-year-old Jew Max Vandenburg, who hides out in Liesel’s home. In Bridge of Clay the protagonist is also physical; railing against the world, or trying to control it through his very corporality.

“There’s always an element of boxing [in my books],” says Zuzak. “It comes back to being a disciplined writer – I’ve always trained for it. Writing is a solitary profession. It’s up to you. It’s always testing how much you want. I’m not saying it’s as courageous as boxing but in a way it kind of is – because you’re on your own.”

During the last decade, Zuzak has had his low moments (as, needless to say, did his publishers). But for him there was never a wasted moment, never a wasted word. Sure, 13 years on one book is slow. But “it’s the words under the words” that matters, he insists. “It’s all the words no one ever sees that holds a book up to the surface.”

  • Australian books

Most viewed

logo

Bridge of Clay

64 pages • 2 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue and Part 1, Chapters 1-12

Part 2, Chapters 13-26

Part 3, Chapters 27-38

Part 4, Chapters 39-50

Part 5, Chapters 51-62

Part 6, Chapters 63-74

Part 7, Chapters 75-88

Part 8, Chapters 89-100 and Epilogue

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Summary and Study Guide

Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak is a young adult literary novel following the lives of the Dunbar boys, five brothers who live alone following the death of their mother and abandonment by their father. The novel follows a non-linear narrative that jumps between different characters, decades, and backstories to provide a comprehensive overview of why Clay, the fourth Dunbar brother, leaves home to help their father build a bridge years after having been deserted by him. Zusak is an Australian writer who has published six novels to date, and is most well-known for The Book Thief . He is the winner of awards like the Michael L. Prinz Honor Book award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. He also holds the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association, granted to authors who make significant, lasting contributions to young adult literature.

This guide uses the Alfred A. Knopf first edition hardback copy of the novel.

Get access to this full Study Guide and much more!

  • 6,900+ In-Depth Study Guides
  • 5,100+ Quick-Read Plot Summaries
  • Downloadable PDFs

Content Warning : This novel includes descriptions of illness, violence, and child neglect that may be distressing to some readers. There is also anti-gay bias and language within the text; such terms are only written in their original form if they appear in direct quotes from the novel.

Plot Summary

The SuperSummary difference

  • 8x more resources than SparkNotes and CliffsNotes combined
  • Study Guides you won ' t find anywhere else
  • 100+ new titles every month

Bridge of Clay is a non-linear story told by Matthew Dunbar , the eldest of the five Dunbar boys. Divided into eight parts, many of the novel’s sections devote time to describing the pasts of people instrumental to the Dunbars’ lives. The novel begins as Matthew retrieves his grandmother’s typewriter 11 years after the novel’s inciting incident.

Eleven years prior, the Dunbar boys live in a house of intense chaos, violence, and love. Their mother, Penelope, died of cancer, and within six months, their father, Michael, left them. Matthew and Rory, the eldest two brothers, work to support the family; Henry, the middle brother, re-sells items found at garage sales and arranges sports bets. Second-youngest Clay engages in intense training and fighting, while the youngest brother Tommy collects animals.

Their father, dubbed “the Murderer,” arrives at their house and asks for help building a bridge for his property in Silver. Clay agrees to help him, although he is threatened with violence upon his return because he is betraying the loyalty of his brothers. Clay goes to the overgrown field behind the house, called The Surrounds, and thinks about his friend and crush Carey. The next day, he and Matthew have a meeting with the principal at Clay’s school to express Clay’s desire to drop out; Matthew gives his permission, and the two talk with Claudia Kirkby, a teacher who will become Matthew’s wife. Before Clay departs, Carey gifts him with an engraved lighter and a letter.

This section of the novel also tells the story of Penelope Lesciuszko, who will become Penelope Dunbar , Clay’s mother. Born in the Eastern Bloc, her talents for piano grant her the ability to tour with an orchestra. Her father arranges for her escape from communism without her knowledge, making her a refugee in Austria at the age of 18. After months in refugee camps, she is sent to Australia, where she learns English and becomes a cleaner. She receives news that her father died and uses her savings to buy a piano that is sent to Michael Dunbar’s address by mistake. He helps her move it into her apartment.

In the present day, Clay arrives in Silver and helps his father design the bridge . In the past, Michael Dunbar grows up in the small Australian town of Featherton. He grows obsessed with art after the death of his father. In high school, he falls in love with a girl named Abbey, but delays approaching her until the death of his dog. They move to Sydney following their high school graduation and get married. After four years, Abbey grows increasingly dissatisfied with Michael’s passivity and leaves him. Five years later, Michael and Penelope meet.

Clay’s father goes to work in the Featherton mines, leaving him to begin digging the bridge’s foundation. Clay becomes obsessed with the bridge, working for five days straight before returning to the city for a visit. He goes to his mother’s grave, then returns to Silver and his father’s praise. When Clay receives letters from Carey, Tommy, Rory, and Henry, he decides to return home for a visit. He arrives on Archer Street and is violently beaten by Matthew, but then welcomed inside.

In the past, Michael and Penelope engage in a slow courtship. Michael eventually tells her about Abbey, and a year later proposes to Penelope. The day before their wedding, Penelope is in a bad car accident, giving herself the moniker “the Broken-Nose Bride.” They later buy the house on Archer Street, and Penelope begins teaching English as a second language.

Clay and Matthew spend a day together in the present day and get new books from Claudia, who gives them her phone number. The Dunbar boys watch Carey jockey in a horse race; that night, Clay and Carey meet in The Surrounds, talking about racing and the bridge. Clay returns to Silver. In the past, Penelope and Michael have their sons, raising them in equal parts chaos and love. A constant source of conflict is the piano: Penelope wants her sons to learn, but they are resistant. Matthew is bullied by boys who claim he is gay for learning to play. The harassment escalates until he confesses the situation to his parents and Michael teaches him to fight. The same day Michael challenges the worst bully to a fight is the day that Penelope receives a cancer diagnosis and begins treatment. She takes each of her sons on a one-on-one outing to create positive memories. She is given six months to live by doctors.

Clay purchases a copy of the horse race schedule and takes breaks from building the bridge in the present to listen to Carey race on the radio. When his father goes to the mines to work, he goes to the city, spending his Saturday nights with Carey. She becomes increasingly successful, placing first multiple times. She rides in a renowned race on Easter Monday and wins. She meets Clay at The Surrounds.

In the past, following Penelope’s death, Clay runs the city streets at night searching for their missing father. Matthew has a frustrated outburst at his behavior but begins running with him for companionship. Clay joins track; he and Matthew begin bringing home pets for Tommy, naming them after characters from The Iliad . Clay makes a deal with Matthew that if he wins State, they will buy a mule they found advertised online.

Present Clay and Carey have sex and spend the rest of the night in The Surrounds; Carey leaves early in the morning for her jockey duties and Clay returns to Silver. However, Carey is killed while walking one of the horses, but it is not made clear if she was thrown or fell off due to fatigue. Matthew travels out to Silver to share the news with Clay. Clay enters a spiral of self-blame and returns with Matthew to the city. Clay approaches Carey’s parents and trainer, confessing what happened before her death and taking culpability; both parties absolve him of his guilt. Clay returns to Silver with the mule. In the past, Carey grows up in a family of jockeys, but her parents are resistant to letting her ride. She appeals to renowned trainer Ennis McAndrew and ultimately convinces her parents to let her apprentice beneath him. She meets Clay when her family moves to the city for her apprenticeship, and the two quickly become inseparable. Carey helps Clay track down Abbey, who provides the teenagers with more insight into Michael and his childhood. Carey is warned to cut Clay out of her life because she will not have time for relationships, but they instead develop a weekly ritual to meet at The Surrounds on Saturdays.

Clay and his father bond over loss as they complete the bridge, then travel to Featherton to see the place where Michael grew up. The rest of the Dunbar brothers take a spontaneous trip to Silver and play a football game in the riverbed, eventually joined by their father. Bridge complete, Clay returns to the city with his brothers and works with Matthew until the rainy season arrives. The family returns to Silver to see if the bridge holds under the strain of the overflowing river. After several days of being trapped in their father’s home, the water recedes, and the bridge remains standing. In the past, Penelope survives long past the six-month prognosis given to her by the doctors, but her condition worsens over time. She asks Michael to help her die, a conversation that Clay overhears. Michael carries Penelope outside, intending to put her in the family car while it is running in the garage, but cannot complete the act. Clay emerges from hiding and carries his mother into the garage.

After seeing his bridge successful, Clay leaves Australia. His brothers grow up and miss him. Matthew begins a relationship with Claudia and has two daughters. Together, they decide to wait until his 31st birthday for Clay to return, and if he is still absent, they will get married, Matthew begs his father to find Clay, so Michael travels to Italy. After nearly two months of waiting, he finds Clay. The day of Matthew’s wedding, Clay returns, and the brothers embrace on the lawn of their family home.

blurred text

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now

Ready to dive in?

Get unlimited access to SuperSummary for only $ 0.70 /week

Related Titles

By Markus Zusak

Fighting Ruben Wolfe

Markus Zusak

I Am The Messenger

The Book Thief

Featured Collections

Books & literature.

View Collection

Brothers & Sisters

Daughters & sons, forgiveness, hate & anger, loyalty & betrayal, mortality & death, order & chaos, realistic fiction (high school), the best of "best book" lists, valentine's day reads: the theme of love.

A review of Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

Reviewed by Magdalena Ball

Bridge of Clay By Markus Zusak Picador Australia ISBN: 9781760559922, Trade Paperback, 9 October 2018, 592 pages, aud $32.99

My advanced reading copy of Bridge of Clay  has a black cover that says, in large letters, “The Most Anticipated Book of the Decade”.  That’s a big statement, though I can’t deny that, after the delight of The Book Thief,  I, like many of Zusak’s fans, was certainly anticipating his next book. I imagine it must have been difficult for Zusak to work under such a heavy shadow, but Bridge of Clay  is no disappointment. As is always the case in every Zusak novel, the narration is complex, shifting and unhinging the reader by playing with notions of time, and changing the spotlight and the points of nostalgic engagement.  The story is ostensibly about the five brothers of the Dunbar family, whose mother dies of Cancer and whose dad leaves them shortly afterwards. It isn’t easy but the boys manage to grow up, acquiring a variety of animals and bruises both literal and metaphoric as they try to get by without adults. Clay is the fourth brother, and the story pivots around him and the pact he makes with his father to build a bridge.

Of course that plot summary is a vast simplication.  Bridge of Clay is a beautiful, complex book full of subtlety, metaphor, and human connection. It’s a story of many things, not just a child’s attempt to document the loss and redemption of his family, though that is the driving plot line. It’s also about the nature and power of language and to that extent there is a meta-fictional quality to the work. The first person narrative with its courier font openings addresses the reader directly, asking us to participate in the story making: “I’m sure you’ve met certain people in this world and heard their stories of lucklessness, and you wonder what they did to deserve it.” (67)  It brings in almost absurd referents into a domestic Sydney suburban landscape, from the ever-present presence of Michelangelo viz a fictionalised book titled The Quarryman passed on in a roundabout way from father to son, to Homer’s Odyssey which underscores many of the names in the book including Penelope, the Dunbar matriarch, and an oddly lucid mule named Achilles. Though Penny is already a ghost in the present tense of the book, it is her luminous strength that holds the boys together, even in death:

The fact of Penny Dunbar, though, as we know, is that she might have been slight, and perennially fragile, but she was an expert at somehow surviving. (251)

There are also the nicknames which seem so intimate – “The Mistake Maker”, “The Murderer”, that create an instant affinity between the reader and characters.  The story is not quite magic realism. Nothing specifically supernatural happens in the story, but amidst the tragedy there is a kind of inherent magic in naming things, including the many nicknames bestowed on Penny, “The Mistake Maker” and Michael “The Murderer”. Throughout the story, there are multiple realities happening at once – inner and outer. It is  art – painting, music, and literature – that creates a magic bridge which connects time and place. As the multiple stories shift between present and past; between the moment of love and the transition to its loss, a circularity begins to form, almost as if these events were happening concurrently rather than in a linear progression and if some kind of immortality were possible through the artistic rendering:

There was a teeming noise of insects, electric and erudite. A whole language in a single note. Effortless. (146)

Art is one of the many bridges in this book. There is also, of course, the actual bridge that Clay agrees to build with his father. It is a real bridge connecting Michael Dunbar’s rural place with the rest of the city – made of stone, and constructed from almost nothing – hard work and pain – but it’s also a bridge to re-connect Michael Dunbar with his estranged boys, and to reconnect the grief-stricken Michael and Clay, with life.

Zusak’s writing is consistently beautiful, condensed and poetic, particularly when he’s illuminating a character:

And it was, it was perfectly fitting, too, another blistering February evening; the day had cooked the concrete, the sun still high, and aching.  Itw as heat to be held and depended on, or, really, had hold of him. In the history of all murderes everywhere, this was surely the most pathetic: At five-foot-ten, he was average height. At seventy-five kilos, a normal weight. But make no mistake—he was a wasteland in a suit; he was bent-postured, he was broken. He leaned at the air as if waiting for it to finish him off, only it wouldn’t, not today, for this, fairly suddenly, didn’t feel like a time for murderers to be getting favours. (13)

Zusak’s characters all have a broken charm about them. The narrator, Matthew Dunbar,  provides the anchor that drives the story, written on his grandmother’s typewriter (the “TW”) dug up, both literally and metaphorically, from his father’s childhood home.  Matthew is both harsh and soft – and his deep love for his brother Clay and both of his parents creates a story that is deeply moving. The ultimate bridge in this book is the one between imagination and reality.  The act of creative composition – whether that be music, painting, sculpting, handmaking a bridge, or writing down the story of a family, is itself a kind of magic.  Bridge of Clay  reads quickly, but when the book is finished, it feels like a lifetime has passed. This is a beautiful, tender and tear-jerking story of love, loss, creativity, exile and coming home.  Zusak fans will not be disappointed.

Post navigation

review of novel bridge of clay

Book Review: Markus Zusak’s Bridge of Clay is an extended musing on family, grief and brotherhood

' src=

  • February 5, 2019
  • bridge of clay
  • markus zusak
  • Pan MacMillan
  • Three Stars

review of novel bridge of clay

The entire time that I was reading Markus Zusak ’s new novel, Bridge of Clay , I had Josh Pyke ’s song “Feet of Clay” going around and around in my head. Perhaps, this has only strengthened my belief that the entire novel is really some sort of extended metaphor, although for what exactly I couldn’t say. One thing is for sure: if readers were expecting more of the same from the author of The Book Thief , they’re likely to have been in for a surprise.

In as much as it can be summarised, the book is about Clay Dunbar, the enigmatic fourth Dunbar boy, and the events that happen to him after he agrees to help his estranged father build a bridge. The five Dunbar boys- Matthew, Rory, Henry, Clay and Tommy- have been living alone in their house since their father, Michael, abandoned them. Prior to that, their mother Penny died a slow and painful death from an aggressive cancer. The effect of both of these events on the Dunbar boys has reverberated through their lives as they’ve grown, but for Clay in particular, there seems to be a hurt that needs to be healed. This opportunity to re-connect with Michael, and to revisit the events of the past, will give him the strength that he needs to cope with what is to come. This is just one strand of the narrative, in a book that covers Clay’s relationship with the apprentice jockey Carey Novac, the history of Penny and Michael’s relationship and their pasts before they met, Matthew’s relationship with his brothers’ teacher and much much more. It is no wonder that the book is such a door stop.

Undoubtedly, Zusak’s unique and quirky writing style, beloved by readers of The Book Thief , is still present. At times his determination to use figurative language that is as far from cliched as possible resulted in some stunning turns of phrase, but there were also moments where this obscured the meaning of what was actually happening in the action. There are two significant plot points which spring to mind (and I won’t say what they were) where I am 80% sure that I know what happened, but it was never explicitly said. For a book with a lot of dramatic revelations, this tended to dull the impact. There were moments where I knew I should have been crying, but I just wasn’t.

Perhaps also this came from the distance between me as a reader and Clay Dunbar, the protagonist. Though we were told much about his activities, particularly with regard to bridge building, athletics, and Carey Novac, I still never felt like I understood what made him tick. Instead, I knew more about his oldest brother Matthew, who was the novel’s narrator. As for the other three Dunbar brothers, they all ran a little into one after a while. For another writer, perhaps, this may have been enough to make me abandon the book, but I trusted that Zusak was building up to some sort of payoff, and that, even though there seemed to be twenty different threads of the narrative mingled together, there would be a payoff if I just kept reading.

I spent a full day reading this book last weekend, and every spare moment I could snatch around work to finish it. In particular the setting was vivid to me—a town revolving around its race track, where the streets were named after race horses, and teenagers crash tackled each other on the old track of an evening. The magic of the setting of Bridge of Clay is in the details particular to this book alone, such as the horse racing culture that Zusak develops around the Novac family, and in the Dunbar family’s preoccupation with the stories of Homer, The Odyssey and The Iliad. I could picture their house, their elderly neighbour who came over to check the boys after their fights, their animals, the mattress in the middle of a place called The Surrounds where Clay and Carey Novac would meet. It’s a highly compelling book, and as is true of all family histories, it contains a lot of very complex personal histories all woven in to one.

It’s hard to review a book when it is so clear how much heart and soul and effort an author has put in to writing it. There is no doubt that Zusak is a talented writer, but to my mind, Bridge of Clay is not, as was touted by all the media preceding it, ‘the most anticipated book of the decade’. It was a good book, but it could only fall a little short of all the fanfare it was given.

THREE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)

Markus Zusak’s  Bridge of Clay is available now through Pan Macmillan Australia.

Markus will be appearing at both Perth Writers Week (Feb 19th-25th) and Adelaide Writers’ Week  (Mar 2nd-7th)

Share this:

More to explore on the au:.

' src=

Emily Paull

Emily Paull is a former bookseller, and now works as a librarian. Her debut book, Well-Behaved Women, was released by Margaret River Press in 2019.

Book Review: Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

Book Review: Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

markus zusak

Author:  Markus Zusak

Published:  October 9th   2018

Publisher:  Pan Macmillan

Pages:  592

Genres:   Fiction, Contemporary, Australian

RRP:  $32.99

Rating:  4 stars

Let me tell you about our brother. The fourth Dunbar boy named Clay. Everything happened to him. We were all of us changed through him.

The Dunbar boys bring each other up in a house run by their own rules. A family of ramshackle tragedy – their mother is dead, their father has fled – they love and fight, and learn to reckon with the adult world.

It is Clay, the quiet one, who will build a bridge; for his family, for his past, for his sins. He builds a bridge to transcend humanness. To survive.

A miracle and nothing less.

Markus Zusak makes his long-awaited return with a profoundly heartfelt and inventive novel about a family held together by stories, and a young life caught in the current: a boy in search of greatness, as a cure for a painful past.

On the 9 th October 2018, the most anticipated book of the decade finally made its debut. Bridge of Clay , written by worldwide literary sensation Markus Zusak of The Book Thief fame, made its entrance into the world. Bridge of Clay  is a book over 12 years in the making, it is ambitious, well crafted and poignant. It makes you work hard, but the end result will leave you changed and in awe of Zusak’s natural command of the written word.

Bridge of Clay is a book with an incredibly strong beating heart. The blood that runs through this book are the Dunbar boys.  When the patriarch and matriarch of the family leave the Dunbar boys, it is up to the family left behind to pick up the pieces and help to return to some sort of order.  As the boys learn to negotiate the adult world, one brother stands above the others. Clay Dunbar is the peacemaker, he helps to build a bridge. This bridge has many connotations, but most of all it will help to bring together a family fractured by mistakes, pain and loss.

I felt very fortunate to receive an advanced readers copy of Bridge of Clay from the publisher, Pan Macmillan .  In late November, I attended an evening with Markus Zusak here in Perth, where I was able to get my copy of Bridge of Clay personally signed. Listening to Markus Zusak discuss his writing approach and the book itself was enlightening. It definitely added an extra layer to my reading experience. It helped me to understand just what Zusak intended for this book and the painstaking journey to finally bring it to publication.

I will say straight up that this book made me work hard. As an avid bookworm, I strive  to push myself further with the books I select to read. Bridge of Clay is going down as one book that challenged me and pushed me outside the realms of my reading existence. I recommend that you do set a good block of uninterrupted reading time aside for Bridge of Clay. This perhaps explains my own delay in reading this book almost three months after its official release. I personally chose to save it for the school holidays, where I had plenty of time and a clear head to devote to this tender novel. Bridge of Clay is a challenging, perplexing and enlightening read nonetheless. The structure of this book is something else and put simply, I have not encountered a book like this one before. Time and place converge. The book is epic and expansive, but somehow there is the inherent feeling that every single word expressed on the pages of Bridge of Clay must count for something, if not everything in the overall picture of events.

Once you settle in to Zusak’s prose, which is sparse but also sprawling, you will feel a sense of accomplishment. Every single sentence has been carefully plucked and placed on the page. Zusak is quite the task master, making the reader feel like they have an active role in deciding which moments in the book count and connect to the overall message of the book. I was able to pull quite a lot from Bridge of Clay theme wise. It is a coming of age tale, a family saga, a testament to brotherly love, a crisis point story and one of reconnection, as well as forgiveness.  Each character knows their place in the novel, which is down to the delicate sculpting work of Markus Zusak.

There are plenty of highs, lows, memorable and fleeting moments in Bridge of Clay . Relationships, family, love and romance all have a part to play in the proceedings of the novel. In some ways it could be said that Bridge of Clay is a sketch of family life, particularly of a family under duress. The Dunbars must rise above the challenges thrown at them. The experiences of the Dunbars reminds us of the valuable support system the family unit has to offer and the precarious, as well as cruel nature of life.

Although the book focuses on Clay, one of the Dunbar boys, the book is narrated by Matthew, the eldest child of the Dunbars. I enjoyed this introspective form of narration, it worked well. Whilst I was inside Matthew’s head, I did feel like I got to know the father and mother figures of the tale, along with some significant outer players.

For those who are literary enthusiasts, you will appreciate the literature insertions in Bridge of Clay . Even the animals featured in the book have names inspired by the writing of Homer. I just adored Achilles! I confess to personally only encountering the work of Homer in my high school literature course and I have not revisited his writing since. However, the undercurrent and presentation of the work of this great writer is used to full effect by Marcus Zusak. The same can also be said about the other art references in the book too. I also appreciated the bridge references, which links to the moving title choice of this book. The bridge connotations give us a good overall picture of the book and the direction it travels in, as well as its final resting place.

It is a mighty journey and an uphill climb to take on board Bridge of Clay by world-renowned writer Markus Zusak. Comparisons will inevitably be made to his famous novel, The Book Thief, but my best advice to you as a potential reader of Bridge of Clay is to go into this book cold and appreciate it for all it is worth.

Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak was published on 9th October 2018 by Pan Macmillan. Details on how to purchase the book can be found here.

To learn more about the author of  Bridge of Clay , Markus Zusak, visit  here.

*Thanks extended to Pan Macmillan for providing a free copy of this book for review purposes .

*Book ‘Z’ of the a-z author challenge 2018

#2018 Reading Wrap up

#2018 Reading Wrap up

Australian Women Writers Challenge 2018 Completed Post

Australian Women Writers Challenge 2018 Completed Post

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

  • Bookreporter
  • ReadingGroupGuides
  • AuthorsOnTheWeb

The Book Report Network

Bookreporter.com logo

Sign up for our newsletters!

Regular Features

Author spotlights, "bookreporter talks to" videos & podcasts, "bookaccino live: a lively talk about books", favorite monthly lists & picks, seasonal features, book festivals, sports features, bookshelves.

  • Coming Soon

Newsletters

  • Weekly Update
  • On Sale This Week
  • Winter Reading
  • Fall Preview
  • Summer Reading
  • Spring Preview
  • Holiday Cheer

Word of Mouth

Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, bridge of clay.

share on facebook

- Click here to read Review #2 by Ellie Tiemens.

Review #1 by Anushka Giri

What do you do when you break into the home of the family you abandoned years ago, and standing right there in the kitchen is an attitudinal mule named Achilles? Well, you wash the dirty dishes piled high in the sink, of course, and wait for retribution.

So begins Markus Zusak’s BRIDGE OF CLAY, named for the fourth of five Dunbar boys, a rough-and-tumble crew who spends their time together beating the snot out of each other, cursing up a storm and watching '80s movies while surrounded by their strange menagerie of pets. There’s Matthew, the eldest, the blunt, responsible one. There’s the unruly Rory, with a penchant for drunkenly stealing mailboxes. There’s Henry, the charming, money-minded one. There’s Clay, the quiet one, a hoarder of stories. And then there’s the oh-so-lovable Tommy, who brings home a pet every chance he gets, and carefully selects the perfect name from Greek mythology (hence the mule Achilles). The story is about all of them, but it’s especially about Clay.

"[BRIDGE OF CLAY] is a tale fraught with trauma, sorrow, guilt and regret, but always interlaced with bold strips of love, joy and rambunctiousness, a story that is universal in feeling, if not in the specifics."

Clay is set apart from the other Dunbar boys --- he’s reticent, a smiler but not a laugher, and constantly training, running around glass-strewn tracks and up and down the streets of a city that is small and familiar yet also infinitely sprawling. What is he brutally, relentlessly training for? And how is this mystery entwined with the return of the Dunbar boys’ dad, who vanished without a trace long ago?

Though ostensibly about the eponymous Clay, BRIDGE OF CLAY is told from the perspective of Matthew, the eldest of the boys and their guardian since their mother passed away and their father abandoned them. He tells the story from a distant point in the future, one in which he is married with children, and the fate of Clay is temporarily unknown to the reader. It is a difficult book to describe, in all its complexity --- it flicks back and forth in time, tracing the histories of each character in loving detail. It reminds me of a project I had to do once in art class, loosely weaving plastic thread. I am not sure what the heck I was doing, but in the end, when I was told to pull the ends of the strings --- tight, tight, tight --- the threads all neatly came together to make sense, to create a whole.

I admittedly approached the story with ridiculously high expectations. How could I not, when this was Markus Zusak, author of the beloved THE BOOK THIEF? It was impossible not to set myself up for failure when, 10 years prior, I had been swept up in the story of a little girl named Liesel, and had been unable to put that book down until the tears drowning my eyes had forced me to.

I won’t sugarcoat it: BRIDGE OF CLAY drove me nuts for the first 200 pages. I couldn’t follow the leaps in time or keep track of the characters. I started over four times, frustrated with my inability to understand everything that was going on. But I was determined to see it through, because I could see Zusak flinging those breadcrumbs over his shoulder, and I’d be darned if I didn’t follow him to the end, to see where it all led. It was my fifth time staring at the now-familiar words on the first page before I got my act together, set my expectations aside and made a pact with myself to carry on, even if I didn’t immediately fall into the story.

It was then that I was able to make it through, to appreciate the book for what it is, and what it isn’t (i.e. round two of the reading experience I had with THE BOOK THIEF). What it IS is the tale of a boy who builds a bridge, the bridge being a metaphor for the stories that make up each and every one of us, stretching forward but also backward, reconciling the past with the future.

While I think that younger readers who enjoyed THE BOOK THIEF would be tempted to pick up BRIDGE OF CLAY, which is ostensibly about a teenage boy, I would recommend this book to a more mature reader, one with a wider range of life experiences, who can better discern the emotional complexity that comes across through Zusak’s typical charmingly whimsical tone. Though I am not convinced that the story warrants the oftentimes muddled 500-plus pages it encompasses, it is clear in the blurred but palpable edges of a decade’s worth of innumerable rewrites that this was a labor of love, a story struggling to escape its writer. It is a tale fraught with trauma, sorrow, guilt and regret, but always interlaced with bold strips of love, joy and rambunctiousness, a story that is universal in feeling, if not in the specifics.  

Review #2 by Ellie Tiemens

Ten years ago, Markus Zusak stunned the world with his brilliantly crafted novel THE BOOK THIEF. Readers worldwide have since fallen in love with his other works such as I AM THE MESSENGER and FIGHTING RUBEN WOLFE. But this year, readers get another delightful taste of Zusak’s writing in his newest novel, BRIDGE OF CLAY.

The Dunbar boys --- all five of them --- live an unexpected life. Their mother a piano-playing refuge and their father a heartbroken artist, the five brothers grew up in a home of love, laughter and grief. Following their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, the boys learn to cope with a new life of just each other and their five pets, including a mule named Achilles. Each boy struggles in their own way to come into adulthood and the struggles it brings. The second from youngest boy, Clay, decides that he wants to build a bridge. And he cannot do it without their father.       So, Clay finds his father and begins to build a bridge that will come to represent the reconstruction of their once complete and happy family.

BRIDGE OF CLAY weaves together a multigenerational tale of the lives of the brothers and their parents, Penny and Michael. Though the novel jumps between points in Penny’s penniless and piano-filled childhood, Michael’s mysterious past, and the current lives of the Dunbar brothers, it creates a cohesive story of a family that is simultaneously alike and completely different than your typical clan of relatives.

It is no surprise that Markus Zusak can write such a complex story of overlapping timelines and histories in such a cohesive way. Told from both first and third points of view, BRIDGE OF CLAY is a unique response to the way that families deal with everyday life and also unusual successes and trials. Each sentences Zusak writes is carefully crafted in a poetic and brilliant way that makes readers feel like part of the Dunbar family.

Each character in this novel, from the five brothers to their parents, grandparents, love interests and even pets, has a distinct and intriguing voice. The characters all struggle with everyday problems such as bickering with brothers and also more rare circumstances like the death of a loved one. But in the midst of the tragedies, Zusak doesn’t downplay the little things in the lives of a family. He puts a spotlight on the way that different personalities collide and conflict in a family; he paints a portrait of the mundane in a way Michelangelo would admire. Zusak convinces readers to love the Dunbar family and all they have to offer. He makes their story seem like real life. Zusak is a masterful crafter of the story of life. Time and time again he proves that any and every part of life is a story worth telling.

Fans of novels like THE BOOK THIEF, I’LL GIVE YOU THE SUN, and TO ALL THE BOYS I’VE LOVED BEFORE and television shows like “This is Us” and “Parenthood” that tell the stories of the complexities of families will fall in love with BRIDGE OF CLAY and the way that Zusak writes.

Reviewed by Anushka Giri and Ellie Tiemens on October 12, 2018

review of novel bridge of clay

Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

  • Publication Date: October 9, 2018
  • Genres: Fiction
  • Hardcover: 544 pages
  • Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
  • ISBN-10: 1984830155
  • ISBN-13: 9781984830159

review of novel bridge of clay

Book review: Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

I probably should start this review by confessing that I haven’t read the much-lauded The Book Thief ( regular readers of my reviews will know how I feel about historical fiction!).  I did see the movie however and yes, know it’s not the same thing, though it did give me a sense of the book’s themes.

I was happy to receive an advance copy of Markus Zusak’s Bridge of Clay , but it wasn’t until I read this interview with him  the weekend before its release that I REALLY wanted to read this book which was 13 years in the making.

And I was most certainly not disappointed.

Book review: Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

The Dunbar boys bring each other up in a house run by their own rules. A family of ramshackle tragedy - their mother is dead, their father has fled - they love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world. It is Clay, the quiet one, who will build a bridge; for his family, for his past, for his sins. He's building a bridge to transcend humanness. To survive. A miracle and nothing less.

This is one of those reviews I worry won’t do the book justice. Usually I procrastinate over them for an inordinate amount of time but because I waited until just before publication date to read this book, I’ve got no time to dilly dally.

So… #longstoryshort: I loved this book and Zusak’s writing is stunning.

I recently went to a session at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival and this year’s Miles Franklin winner, Michelle de Kretser​ talked about her process of writing. She doesn’t get overwhelmed she explained, and she really doesn’t plot out her work methodically (I gather Zusak DOES do this). However… she said she focuses only on the sentence before her. And then the next.

Zusak’s words and sentences are crafted in such a way it’s almost as if meticulous thought has gone into each. And – from the interview I referred to earlier – perhaps it has. It certainly pays off. His writing never becomes lazy. His prose and phrasing precise and eloquent.

In reality, this could be seen as a ‘small’ book. (Not in size, cos it’s bloody long!) But in essence not a lot happens. Though at the same time, a lot happens – if that makes sense.

I know I tend to blather on about my preference for action scenes and the fact I skim-read until SOMETHING happens; however this isn’t a book that permits the skipping of words, sentences, paragraphs or details.

Everything is important. Every nuanced word. Every skerrick of information.

This is a story about the Dunbar boys. All five of them. But mostly one of them, Clay. Well, two because the eldest Matthew, is the one doing the telling and so it’s really his story as well.

But before the five Dunbar boys there was Penelope (Penny) a pianist and lover of Homer, whose father pushed her out of her old life in the Eastern Bloc (Poland, I think) towards a better one. And then there was Michael, the son of an independent woman who encouraged his passion for art… a passion rejected later when his heart was broken and a passion which was (inexplicably) secreted away.

And they are all part of this story as well because as Michael puts it… without Penny or Michael (and / or their respective stories) there would be no Dunbar boys, no Clay and no bridge.

This is most certainly a story of love and loss.

There’s death and loss. Both long and lingering and abrupt and unexpected.

There’s romantic love – Penny and Micheal and then the next generation – most particularly the brawny but sensitive Clay and Matthew.

And there’s a love that’s not often told or celebrated… the love between brothers. The Dunbar boys fight and bicker, they rib and they rile but they love each other fiercely.

It’s a mystery, even to me sometimes, how boys and brothers love. p 309

Most coincidentally (for me) there’s a strong focus on art and literature. Penny grew up with music and books and Michael with art and sculpture. Penny in particular passed her love of The Odyssey and The Iliad onto her sons. Michael’s love was hidden from all but Clay who Matthew explains sat willingly at the laps of his parents as they told their stories – though initially he explains, their stories were edited and ‘almost everythings’ and ‘most-of-truths’.

The bridge referenced in the title is not a metaphor…. well, it kinda is, but isn’t. The bridge itself does (or will) exist but it’s also one reuniting a broken family and I loved a quote delivered by our narrator, speaking of Clay and his relationship with their father:

The distance between us was him. p 329

Of course the bridge itself is inspired by the artists of centuries gone by and a shared fascination with Michelangelo Buonarroti and a story about his life (what I believe to be a fictional book cos I can’t find any reference to it), The Quarryman .

Everything he ever did was made not only of bronze or marble or paint, but of him… of everything inside him. p 126

There’s great detail, for example about Michelangelo and the statue of David in the Accademia Gallery in Florence WHICH I JUST BLOODY SAW A FEW WEEKS AGO, and I was easily taken back to our guide’s passionate rendering of the man (who was the boy) who fought Goliath.

Structurally the book’s very clever and Zusak jumps about in a way that’s pretty easy for we readers to follow. We start near the end and then leap back a bit. But our narrator Matthew, makes it clear that clear we need to settle in for what’s coming from his opening line:

In the beginning there was one murderer, one mule and one boy, but this isn’t the beginning, it’s before it….

I’ve touched briefly on the plot as it’s almost secondary. It isn’t obviously, because this whole book is the telling of a series of events throughout the lives of Penny, Michael and the Dunbar boys. Life changing moments. Pivotal moments… whether they knew that at the time or not.

Some of the moments Matthew (well, Zusak) shares with us are small. The boys’ games of monopoly. Their scrapping and the constant bickering between Rory and Henry. Matthew’s penchant for 80s movies inherited from his mother. And young Tommy’s odd collection of pets, all named after those in his mother’s books by Homer.

It’s those moments – the small ones between the big ones – that Zusak correctly identifies as being the ones that matter.

If I’m being picky the book is possibly missing a climax I would have liked, or perhaps rather…. a rearranging could put an important scene (involving a clothesline – long story!) closer to the end as – once we kinda knew the dire-ness or otherwise – of the situation (11 years on), it felt a bit anticlimactic. I’d be keen to hear what others think of that as I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just me… wanting a little more grunt at the end – to go out on a high.

Of course the cleverness of the storytelling, the beauty of the writing and the complexity of characters you can’t help but love negate any moans I have about the ending and this is possibly my favourite book of the year so far. (Currently vying with Chris Hammer’s Scrublands for the number one spot fin my affections!)

Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak was published in Australia by Picador / Pan Macmillan and now available.

I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes.

* The pages of my quotes are from the uncorrected proof, so may have changed before final printing.

review of novel bridge of clay

  • « Previous post
  • Next Post »

Comments are closed.

Search my book reviews

  • Book reviews by author
  • Book reviews by genre
  • Book reviews by rating

deborah cook

Hi, I’m Deborah… a seachanger living on Australia’s Fraser Coast, in Queensland. I write about books and life in general.

Don't miss out!

Subscribe to Debbish and receive notifications of new posts.

Email Address

privacy and gdpr compliance

  • Biggest New Books
  • Non-Fiction
  • All Categories
  • First Readers Club Daily Giveaway
  • How It Works

review of novel bridge of clay

Bridge of Clay

review of novel bridge of clay

Embed our reviews widget for this book

review of novel bridge of clay

Get the Book Marks Bulletin

Email address:

  • Categories Fiction Fantasy Graphic Novels Historical Horror Literary Literature in Translation Mystery, Crime, & Thriller Poetry Romance Speculative Story Collections Non-Fiction Art Biography Criticism Culture Essays Film & TV Graphic Nonfiction Health History Investigative Journalism Memoir Music Nature Politics Religion Science Social Sciences Sports Technology Travel True Crime

February 20, 2024

Surfing

  • On surfing and infrastructures
  • An interview with Ed Zwick
  • Oluwaseun Olayiwola on generation gaps and aging

IMAGES

  1. Review: BRIDGE OF CLAY

    review of novel bridge of clay

  2. Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak, Paperback, 9781760781620

    review of novel bridge of clay

  3. REVIEW: Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

    review of novel bridge of clay

  4. Why You Must Read Bridge of Clay

    review of novel bridge of clay

  5. Review: Bridge of Clay

    review of novel bridge of clay

  6. REVIEW: Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

    review of novel bridge of clay

VIDEO

  1. Lauren Beukes tells us about her new novel, Bridge

  2. Tom Clay

COMMENTS

  1. Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak review

    Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak review - Death steals the show again Five boys alone in a house seek redemption through construction in the long-awaited follow-up to The Book Thief Alfred...

  2. Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

    41,011 ratings6,778 reviews The breathtaking story of five brothers who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. As the Dunbar boys love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world, they discover the moving secret behind their father's disappearance.

  3. 'Bridge of Clay,' by Markus Zusak book review

    October 9, 2018 at 3:53 p.m. EDT Markus Zusak, the phenomenally popular Australian writer, worked on "Bridge of Clay" for two decades, essentially his whole adult life. Such perseverance is...

  4. BRIDGE OF CLAY

    Years after the death of their mother, the fourth son in an Australian family of five boys reconnects with his estranged father.

  5. Bridge of Clay review: Slow-paced novel is both masterful and tedious

    Bridge of Clay review: Slow-paced novel is both masterful and tedious Markus Zusak's rich characterisation is dragged down by overwrought style Expand Markus Zusak: latest novel has many of...

  6. Bridge of Clay Book Review

    Drinking, Drugs & Smoking Rory is shown after heavy drinking several times. Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that Bridge of Clay, by Markus Zusak ( The Book Thief ), is about five Australian boys raising themselves after their mother's death and their father's subsequent abandonment of them.

  7. Bridge of Clay review: Markus Zusak's joy in the possibility of human

    Bridge of Clay is a tender book, set in a world that is anything but. Its enormous ambitions are sustained by heartfelt beliefs, not least in the power of love. This vast novel is a feast of ...

  8. Summary and reviews of Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

    by Markus Zusak Critics' Opinion: Readers' rating: Published Oct 2018 544 pages Genre: Literary Fiction Publication Information Young Adult Rate this book Write a Review Buy This Book About this book Summary Book Summary An unforgettable and sweeping family saga from Markus Zusak.

  9. Bridge of Clay, Review: Markus Zusak's beguiling narrative

    Bridge of Clay, Review: Markus Zusak's beguiling narrative By Joanne P Last updated January 18, 2022 Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak is masterful in its capacity to move readers. An epic tale of normal people swimming against the flood of life. Read my full review. Bridge of Clay Synopsis Long-listed for Indie Book Awards Fiction 2019

  10. Book review: Markus Zusak's Bridge Of Clay is moving and incredibly

    Bridge Of Clay is a moving, incredibly human piece of work. And at nearly 600 pages, the novel - which took Zusak more than a decade to write - is also a baggy collection of character narratives ...

  11. Markus Zusak on how Bridge of Clay left him 'beaten up and bruised

    Indeed, his latest novel to hit the shelves - Bridge of Clay - took a whopping 13 years to write. Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak review - Death steals the show again Read more

  12. REVIEW: Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

    by Markus Zusak Review by John Purcell Bridge of Clay is the first book from Markus Zusak since he took the world by storm with The Book Thief. This new novel has to be the most highly anticipated return to publication in recent times. Fans have been screaming for a new book. Booksellers have been growing more and more impatient.

  13. Bridge of Clay review : Reviewed: Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

    `Intriguing' - that's Eileen Dunne's word for Bridge of Clay, the latest novel from Markus Zusak, the the best-selling Australian author of The Book Thief which has sold by the truck-load since it ...

  14. Bridge of Clay Summary and Study Guide

    The novel follows a non-linear narrative that jumps between different characters, decades, and backstories to provide a comprehensive overview of why Clay, the fourth Dunbar brother, leaves home to help their father build a bridge years after having been deserted by him.

  15. A review of Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

    Effortless. (146) Art is one of the many bridges in this book. There is also, of course, the actual bridge that Clay agrees to build with his father.

  16. Bridge of Clay Summary

    Lauren Miller, M.A. | Certified Educator Last Updated September 5, 2023. Bridge of Clay is a novel that follows Matthew, one of five brothers, who recorded his family's history on a typewriter.

  17. Book Review: Markus Zusak's Bridge of Clay is an extended musing on

    It's hard to review a book when it is so clear how much heart and soul and effort an author has put in to writing it. There is no doubt that Zusak is a talented writer, but to my mind, Bridge of Clay is not, as was touted by all the media preceding it, 'the most anticipated book of the decade'. It was a good book, but it could only fall a ...

  18. Book Review: Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

    Review: On the 9 th October 2018, the most anticipated book of the decade finally made its debut. Bridge of Clay, written by worldwide literary sensation Markus Zusak of The Book Thief fame, made its entrance into the world. Bridge of Clay is a book over 12 years in the making, it is ambitious, well crafted and poignant. It makes you work hard ...

  19. Bridge of Clay

    [1] Bridge of Clay was released in the United States and Australia on 9 October 2018, [2] and in the United Kingdom on 11 October 2018. [3] Plot The Dunbar boys live in a suburb of Sydney, in a house of mayhem and madness that only five young boys can cause.

  20. Bridge of Clay

    Reviews Bridge of Clay Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak - Click here to read Review #2 by Ellie Tiemens. Review #1 by Anushka Giri What do you do when you break into the home of the family you abandoned years ago, and standing right there in the kitchen is an attitudinal mule named Achilles?

  21. REVIEW: 'Bridge of Clay' was well worth the wait

    It's been 1 3 ye a rs since the public a tion of "The Book Thief," a nd Zus a k fin a lly returned to the liter a ry world in October with "Bridge of Cl a y. " "Bridge of Cl a y" follows the story of the five Dunb a r boys. Their f a ther, who left the f a mily a fter the de a th of their mother, h a s returned a nd is seeking ...

  22. Book review: Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

    ISBN: 176055992X, 9781760559922 Pages: 592 Goodreads The Dunbar boys bring each other up in a house run by their own rules. A family of ramshackle tragedy - their mother is dead, their father has fled - they love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world.

  23. Book Marks reviews of Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

    Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak has an overall rating of Positive based on 12 book reviews.