The story of five brothers who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. As the Dunbar boys love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world, they discover the moving secret behind their father’s disappearance.
A modern epic ... is Zusak at his best. To read a novel by this masterful author is to embark on an immersive journey that challenges readers to expand their understanding of what it is to be human.
... yet this book too is a stunner. Devastating, demanding and deeply moving, Bridge of Clay... unspools like a kind of magic act in reverse, with feats of narrative legerdemain concealed by misdirection that all make sense only when the elements of the trick are finally laid out ... Grief and sacrifice lie at the heart of things, and we can feel it through Mr. Zusak’s writing even before we understand the story’s real contours... His style is like free verse, at once spare and dense with feeling and meaning.
Surprisingly warm and heartfelt ... rowdy and joyous, with flashes of wit and insight, and ultimately moving. The brief chapters and bone-rattling pace make it interesting for anyone with a shortish attention span.
