The Bridge (Paperback)

~ Iain Banks (Author) "TRAPPED. CRUSHED. WEIGHT COMING FROM ALL DIrections, entangled in the wreckage (you have to become one with the machine)..." (more)
Key Phrases: nevir mind, linking span, train deck, Miss Arrol, Abberlaine Arrol, Field Marshal (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Orr, the otherwise unnamed protagonist of this Pynchonesque novel, is a successful Scottish engineer who's a bit fed up with life: his work doesn't really interest him anymore; years of doping and boozing have dulled him; his girlfriend has other lovers (he does too, but he would rather she was monogamous). Then one evening he crashes his classic Jaguar into a parked MG. The aftermath is coma and months of amnesiac trance, a condition that Orr apparently comes to prefer. The reader, however, only understands all this towards the end of the novel. Virtually the whole of the narrative consists of Orr's trauma-induced hallucinations. The bridge of the title is a fantastically ramifying construct in Orr's brain resembling an outer-space city in a science fiction movie. Banks's ( The Player of Games ) novel is satire, and its target turns out to be the British Isles' equivalent of American "yuppies." Deploying a wide range of stylistic devices, the narrative condemns fiercely an overly mechanistic society and its self-referential ethos.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

An amnesiac searching for his past finds his life dominated by the world of "the bridge," a gigantic structure whose ends have never been seen but which contains a lost library, a host of dreams and nightmares, and the key to another reality. From the expansive, macrocosmic scale of Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games , Banks turns inward to explore the complex, surreal microcosm of the human mind in a kaleidoscopic novel for sophisticated, literary readers of speculative fiction. Recommended.-- JC
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Eos; 1st THUS edition (February 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061053589
• ISBN-13: 978-0061053580
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #788,932 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Maybe not the best place to start., September 1, 2001

By	"nwc18" (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This is one of Banks' less readable outings. The use of language is just too complex for The Bridge to be considered a page-turner, but it is a book well worth the work for Banks fans. That said, it is perhaps a bad place to start with this author (I would recomend Complicity or The Player of Games, both captivating, well writen books, and considerably easier reads). It involves a man in a dreamscape while lying in a coma (maybe). He has had an accident on a large road/rail bridge and now finds himself on an endless, self-sufficient bridge covered with cities and farmland. He has no memories of his past, but knows that he doesn't fit in. And then things start to get complex and sureal, with bloodthirsty barbarians, war criminals, missing libraries, and a few Banks in-jokes (this book was his third published, but he had already written five [I think] SF books that hadn't sold, a couple of them about the Culture, and that's the why of the knife-missile).

An earlier reviewer commented on this book's similarity to Marabou Stork Nightmares by Welsh. The comment that this book seems to draw on Welsh as an influence would be reasonable, except that The Bridge was written ten years before Marabou.

Happy reading.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Please read, August 19, 1999

By A Customer

I don't easily give a book 5 stars, but this piece of writing showed how Iain Banks was not a one-off with the success of the Wasp Factory. In fact, no matter how good the wasp factory wasm, this is better.

The narrative follows an individual as he slips into a coma after an accident and the stories of the two parrallel lives in either. It is interspaced by the bizzare adventures of the most wicked, foul, scots-tounged knight ever to exist. Follow his narrative at your peril.

The story would be fine as it stands, but where the story unfolds in the parrallel world is a giant city built on an endless bridge. What really made the story for me was what the bridge was modelled on in real life - the Forth Bridge in Scotland. One thing that i'm interested in was whether or not other readers of the book who have not seen the forth bridge and it's surroundings felt the story had the same edge. Readers?

To conclude, a book that opened my eyes, and definately Bank's best. Just don't make this the first Banks book that you read - start on the wasp factory, a free tip!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A huge dream and a nightmare all mixed up. Brilliant!, July 21, 1998

By	Gregor (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

I read this book when it came out a long time ago, after reading Wasp Factory. I couldn't wait. It is to this day the most involving and mind wrenching of love stories I've ever read. A mix of the brooding spaces of the English Patient, the never-quite-get-her-angst of John Le Carre, and the building adrenaline rush of early Robert Ludlum, oh, and add a big bucket of Italo Calvino, Philip K. Dick and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I just can't think of anybody else that can twist it all together like Mr Banks. I can't look at the Forth Rail Bridge the same way again, it is now a big labyrinth built by Banks. This is a must buy book, if you like any of the above (well maybe not Ludlum...) go get it.