Customer Reviews

The Bridge over the River Kwai

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The charges are set against the pilings. The British commandoes lay hidden in the bush. The train is coming 'round the bend. Just then, a British colonel, a POW, takes a final walk over the bridge he helped build for his enemy and looks over the parapet. His blue eyes narrow. Something is wrong...

Those of you who think you know what will happen next, from seeing the Oscar-winning film adaptation of this novel, may be in for a surprise or two. Author Pierre Boulle's point seems less about the folly of war and of racialism (as was the case in the movie) and more about how a blind work ethic can make one betray the very things one holds dear, without knowing it.

It's tempting to look at this book and think of it as a literary dig at the proper, orderly Brits by a typically relativistic French author. But Boulle, a World War II French resistance fighter who was captured by the Vichy in the Far East, apparently wanted to use the real-life building of the bridge (in reality, there were two) by British POWs as an examination of how warfare tilts moral scales and turns lawfully-minded leaders into traitors.

It's an interesting position, presented here more in the form of a quasi-fable, or more to the point, two short stories joined together. In the first, we see British Col. Nicholson face off against Japanese Col. Saito, who expects the British to resign themselves to servitude, officers included. In the second, we watch a trio of British green berets prepare their attack on the bridge.

One of the movie's main characters, the one played by William Holden, is not in the novel, which is fine with me. I found the guy annoying. But the other characters don't come into greater focus for his absence.

Instead, they are rather colorless, especially Saito, presented here as a brutal drunkard with none of the panache that director David Lean and actor Sessue Hayakawa bestow on the character in the movie. It's especially hard to like Nicholson when Alec Guinness isn't giving us a spoonful of sugar with all that thematic medicine. He's more of a martinet here, dense to the point of ridiculousness, like when a subordinate suggests they paint the bridge after building it.

"The most we could do would be to give it a coating of lime - and a fine target that would make for the planes, wouldn't it," Nicholson counters. "You seem to forget there's a war on!"

That's about as close as the book comes to humor. It is tense at times, but slow-moving, and like other reviewers here I found the book lacking in narrative detail that would have made it feel more alive. It's a quick read, worth reading especially if you enjoyed the movie. But I missed the Nicholson Guinness played in the movie, and if you were a fan of the film, so will you.

This is not one of those cover-all-the-details-of-a-battle or expose-the-brutality-of-war books. Instead of focusing on battles between men, this book focuses on battles within men. My brain joined the characters as they grappled with believable and conflicting issues like:
- honor vs. survival
- useful work that preserves dignity but helps the enemy vs. sabotage that undermines the enemy's plans and as well as personal dignity
- pride of workmanship vs. the best interests of one's country

- mission/orders vs. the value of human life

These and other issues get attention at varied intensity levels. They're all seen from the eyes of soldiers in a war zone, and it's not easy to determine the right thing to do. I got a window into the minds of the soldiers and enough detail to enable me to fully understand their dilemmas.

This book is well-written, and the action is spread out such that I wanted to keep turning the pages. I'm glad read it, but I'm also glad I didn't have to live it.

Very different in many ways from the Academy Award winning film, the short book is well worth reading in its own right. It's somehow bleaker and more disheartening, sort of a war noir. Interestingly enough Boulle also wrote "Planet of the Apes."

A great classic, in the tradition of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. This book could have been much longer, the author could have written hundreds of paragraphs of descriptive imagery, explored the relationships between the principal characters in greater detail, but didn't, thus adding to the fable quality of this narrative.

The story presents us with a concise portrait of one of the most basic motives of the human animal - the desire to do something great. Whether it is more noble to build or destroy is a question the reader will have to decide for himself.

Pierre Boulle equates the ritual of the Japanese with the ritual of the British. Lots of room for disagreement here. Few people would disagree with the more American view that being a captive of the Japanese in WWII could well be a sentence of death. But of course, Boulle is French so that explains some of his xenophobia regarding either country.

The fact is, the moral issues are carefully presented. The soothsayer, Major Clipton, goes back and forth with the concept that imprisoned men with nothing to do often die of despair.

The time is 1942 in a Japanese prison camp. Conditions are atrocious. The Japanese are building a train route between Burma into points north. The route will carry men and machines to further the Imperial Japanese aims. It is early in WWII and the Americans (there are none in the book) and the British have pretty much been spanked by the advancing Japanese. Read retreat. Reat surrender. Read a long time in a jungle prison camp. Read dysentery, diphtheria and malaria.

So Colonel Nicholson's, he's the British ranking officer,isn't stupid. He knows that without some form of discipline many of his men will give up. The evil alcoholic prison warden, Colonel Saito, is his counterpart.

With concessions, Nicholson agrees to build the bridge crossing the 600 foot wide Kwai River. But should he do an acceptable job? An above average job? Or should he do the best possible job imaginable, a credit to the British Army, lasting into and beyond the next century?

Major Shears and his demolition team from Force 316 rendezvous in Siam (that's how old the book is) to blow up the bridge. And all three forces meet, Nicholson, Saito and Shears.

Certainly up there in the top ten books about the war. Read in conjuction with Katzanbach's "Hart's War" (For God's sake, skip THAT movie)or Jmaes Clavell's "King Rat," all about the morality of prisoners of war.

5 stars. Could have been 6 or 7.

Bridge Over the River Kwai is a very interesting novel depicting the true story of POW's from a Japanese Labor Camp who are forced to build a bridge for the Japanese war effort. Although the novel can be dry at times, the descriptions of camp life and the grueling work conditions come alive, putting you right there in the thick jungle next to some sweaty G.I.s. Plus the underlying issue of personal desires getting in the way of the big picture (the Allied war effort) is undeniably strong and is a lesson in life that everyone should be exposed to. Bridge Over the River Kwai is a definite "must read" in my opinion.

True story of WW II Japanese prisoner of war camp in which Allied POWs are forced to build a railroad bridge to benefit the Japanese war effort. The book served as the basis for the 1956 Oscar winning movie for Best Picture. The book deals with the grim brutality of war, but still depicts the humanity of both captors and captives

I decided to read Pierre Boulle's "The Bridge Over the River Kwai" because I had greatly enjoyed David Lean's famous 1957 film adaptation. Overall the novel makes for relatively quick reading and doesn't bog down in complexity as some books do for better or worse. The plot essentially follows two parallel stories heading towards an intersection at the climax. One story is a satirical tale of a British POW colonel who's pride lead him to help the Japanese build a railway bridge at the expense of his suffering men. The other plot line follows a trio of British commandos planning on destroying the bridge. Parts of the book are quite close to the film although major differences exist as well (e.g. no William Holden character, somewhat different ending). Like the film, the novel is highly fictionalized. For a more accurate depiction of the Thai Burma railway I would recommend Ernest Gordon's memoir "To End all Wars" or the somewhat fictionalized film adaptation of the same name. Overall "The Bridge over the River Kwai" is a readable book but one that doesn't in my opinion equal the film. It held my interest but was certainly not exceptional.

Astounding story and beautifully written. Adeptly portrays how man will always find a reason to survive even if, occasionally, that reason becomes the cause of his own death.

I first knew about the book and the movie, "The Bridge Over The River Kwai" through a French daily newspaper back in 1952, when I was in Hanoi, North Vietnam.

It took me 6 years before I could watch the movie in 1958, when I was in Saigon, South Vietnam. But in this lapse of time - 1952-1958 - I'd had a chance to read the book in French, English and Vietnamese. I have enjoyed it so much that so far I have read that book about 30 times. Pierre Boulle really made a profound and detailed study of each of his main characters, and each has his own reasons to behave the way he does, to talk the way he should, and to act the way most suitable to his culture, to his concept of courage, discipline, obedience and honour.

In July 2009 I met a young American missionary couple at a friendly dinner in Clermont, Florida. We accidentally talked about "The Bridge Over the River Kwai", which they had heard about, but not read. But in return, they introduced me to the book "To End All Wars", a true story written by Ernest Gordon, a survivor of a Japanese camp among many others along the River Kwai whose POWs had been forced to build the Burma-Thailand "Railroad of Death" which would permit the Japanese to control the Southeast Asia. Both books dealt with the same period, the same situation, the same locality, but most of all the same extreme suffering brought by war -- and both became Academy Award-winning motion pictures.

I ordered "The Bridge Over The River Kwai" from Amazon.com in August to give to the new friends I met in Florida, as I believe this is one of the best novels I have ever read.

An 81-year-old Vietnamese-American lady reader.