A MATTER OF HEART
FICTION Bridge of Clay MARKUS ZUSAK (Picador, $33)
It is not surprising that after the spectacular success of The Book Thief it has taken Markus Zusak a commensurate dozen years to publish his next novel. He has said that while he is excited to see the book in print, he is still challenged by it.
“I could write this book until I die and it still won’t be the way I want it,” he told the New York Times.
“But I think now it’s got the right heart and I think once you’ve got that then you’ve got an obligation to yourself to see it through and you hope people will find that in it.”
It would be hard not to find the heart in Bridge of Clay, which is something of an apotheosis of Zusak’s early Ruben Wolfe trilogy where a few of its themes had a trial run. The long-awaited result is a testosteronefuelled family saga replete with heart and heartbreak, love and loss.
Much as omniscient Death told the story of The Book Thief, so Matthew Dunbar narrates Bridge of Clay, entering the hearts and minds of his parents and brothers with an omniscience that is harder to accept in a human narrator and hence initially a little confusing.
His story starts with his father, Michael, as a boy seated under his mother’s desk at the doctor’s surgery, tuned to the rhythm of her typewriter.
Later it will introduce a young Polish music student, as her father secretly organises her escape to the West, and join the two of them, Michael and Penelope, over a piano delivered to the wrong address and a shared love of Homer.
It will explore a girl’s love of horses and trackwork, as Carey Novak fulfils her dreams of becoming a jockey; traverse the intimate geography of dying; and trace Michael to the isolated river bed where he flees his grief and over which he plans to build a bridge.
Woven through these deeply connected tales are the Dunbar boys, Matthew, Rory, Henry, Clayton and Thomas, managing their lives in endless physical contention.
Clay, says Matthew, is the best of them, the keeper of the family stories, the principled partner of Carey, the one who is prepared to forgive their father’s defection, to take on the man’s own heroes — Homer and Michelangelo — and make his dream a magnificent reality.
While its males have nothing but respect and tenderness for its female characters, this book could be seen as a celebration of a masculinity that is now being looked at rather askance — its endlessly bloody, brawling boys are so real, so full of tempestuous life.
As with The Book Thief, much of the appeal of the novel lies in Zusak’s heartfelt love for his characters and for language.
The book sings in short musical sentences like poetry, and words stop you in your tracks. The “right heart” is the last thing this author has to worry about.
Markus Zusak will talk about his new book, at the Hobart Town Hall on November 15 at 5.30pm. Tickets , $10, from fullersbookshop.com.au