Customer Reviews

The Bridge of Years

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The Duchesnes lived on a country road near Brussels. They were a sort of magic family who nourished the souls of the members of the immediate family, servants, employees, and friends. At the opening of the book, Melanie, Paul's wife, is rejoicing over the beautiful spring day on a date in 1919. It is after the war in which so much of real living had been postponed.

Paul was a philsopher and perhaps he was a philosopher who should have been a poet. Melanie had inherited the Maison Bernard, a furniture business, from her family. The war intervened and her plan of having a William Morris-style craft collective had been put on hold. Paul and Melanie become interested in the rehabilitation of soldiers, in part to avoid facing their own problems in their enterprises. Paul and Melanie agreed that suffering did not make for generosity. When Paul's mentor and friend Schmidt visits the servants refuse to serve him because he is German. His visit enables Paul to overcome a five year stall in his work. Afterwards Paul writes out his ideas feverishly in some five or six weeks of single-minded concentration on philosophy.

Time shifts to 1930. The couple now has three daughters. Paul's book made little impression and so after several years he joined the furniture-making business. The oldest daughter is interested in stage design and enters a competition at her school. She is disheartened to learn later that her second place prize may have resulted from family influence.

Paul listens to the radio and comes to see Hitler as a sign of a sort of exasperated nationalism. Closer to home he becomes aware of Fleming nationalism. By 1936 the daughters are nearly grown and the servants are planning to leave or they have died. There is drama surrounding their friend Schmidt who seeks to leave Germany notwithstanding the Nazi affiliations, really because of the Nazi affiliations and influence, of his son and the desire of his wife to remain with their only child. He manages to leave for Switzerland. Later he determines that the right thing to do is to fight in Spain. In 1940 Paul and Melanie learn that Schimdt was killed in the bombardment of Madrid. The armies of the combatants of World War Two and then the refugees traverse the Belgian soil.

The books is lively, interesting. I enjoyed Sarton's treatment of European politics, events ranging from 1919 to the 1940's. Many of the issues she deals with concern status.

Although I am an avid reader of Ms. Sarton's work, this novel was hard to get through. I find the characters unsympathetic, and the story itself rather ponderous. As a seed-ground for her later work, it's worth a look; but if this is your first or only time with Ms. Sarton or her novels, look elsewhere, for there is some fine stuff.