Customer Reviews

View from a Burning Bridge

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
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...if you've ever thought about leaving New York. I felt as if these people could be me or any of my friends. FINALLY, here's a contemporary book that shows wonderful, flawed but sympathetic characters in believable, complex relationships. To me, it recalled "Rashomon" and "House of Sand and Fog". Great book!

The infernal view of the title is that of Frances Treadwell, fleeing New York and the overmany fictions she told down there. Her old family place in Maine, however, offers a prickly refuge. Indeed, Sarah Goodyear's first novel spendidly upsets expectations at every turn. It's a story of seeking peace and quiet that gets disrupted by the crash of a meteorite, of renewing love that drops the lover into a deeper and scarier murk than before. Throughout, too, we're never far from good-humored insight, though always at arm's length from treacly sentiment. Perhaps most impressive is how Goodyear sticks close to her protagonist yet exposes all the young woman's contradictions. For aren't Frances' more dubious choices rooted in trepidation about what's new and revitalizing? And in that, doesn't she shares a potentially fatal flaw with the ingrown rural place around her? A debut to celebrate, "Burning Bridge" bears out the ancient wisdom that you can't go home again -- but proves as well that there's no other way to achieve wisdom yourself.

"View from a Burning Bridge" is elequant, suspenseful, hilarious, and heart breaking. It is one of those books where you are instantly brought into the world of the main character. Once you begin to read this story, you won't be able to put it down, and the story stays with you. I highly recommend everyone to buy it today!

Frances Treadwell leaves New York City for the tranquility of Maine in Sarah Goodyear's VIEW FROM A BURNING BRIDGE. Unfortunately, it is ruined by the fall of a meteorite on her property and thus, ends the quietness of her life. Goodyear has written a powerful, gripping and amusing story of relationships and the old saying of one can not go home again. This is an impressive debut novel.

"View from a Burning Bridge" is elequant, suspenseful, hilarious, and heart breaking. It is one of those books where you are instantly brought into the world of the main character. Once you begin to read this story, you won't be able to put it down, and the story stays with you. I highly recommend everyone to buy it today!