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    The Other Side of the Bridge
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    The Other Side of the Bridge
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    The Other Side of the Bridge
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Other Side of the Bridge

    Written by Mary Lawson

    Narrated by Paul Hecht

    4/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    Arthur and Jake are the sons of a farmer in the mid-1930s, when life is tough and another world war is looming. Arthur is solid and dutiful, set to inherit the farm and his father's character; Jake is younger, attractive, mercurial and dangerous to know. A young woman, Laura, comes into the community and tips the fragile balance of sibling rivalry over the edge... And then there is Ian, son of the local doctor, thoughtful, idealistic, and far too sure that he knows the difference between right and wrong. By now it is the Fifties, and the world has changed - a little, but not enough...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateMay 1, 2008
    ISBN9781407426440
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for The Other Side of the Bridge

    4/5

    356 ratings29 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I love Mary Lawson’s writing and her storytelling ability. They are two different skills, and when an author has both the results are always wonderful. Ms. Lawson’s insight into human behavior and emotions adds even more.

      I recommend her work to all my reader friends.
    • 4/5
      A sweet page-turner. Fun to read, a tiny bit thought-provoking, but reading this book was play, not work.
    • 5/5
      Funny but sad story. Mary Lawson is wonderful story teller keeps you delighted with the story to the very end. About Ian coming of age in deciding what career to take and his infatuation with Laura the wife of Arthur. The main story revolves around Arthur and Jake and how they grew.
    • 4/5
      Two brothers in conflict: Arthur and Jake Dunn. Arthur, the elder, is loyal and reliable, but slow witted, clumsy, a bear of a man. He was a failure in school and not allowed to enlist in WWII due to his flat feet.His younger brother Jake is smaller, agile, much brighter, and his mother’s favorite. Jake shirked farm work and with his twisted character he loved to antagonize and humiliate his slower brother. He enjoyed creating situations where his brother was forced to save him.And then one day, Jake and Arthur needed to take some cows across a bridge, but the cows were reluctant. Arthur was slowly coaxing the cows across, but Jake decided to cross underneath the bridge hand over hand. When it was obvious he couldn’t do it, he cried out to Arthur that he would fall. Arthur in disgust said “Good!”. Jake fell, broke his back and sustained other serious injuries.After months in the hospital, Jake was released. He saw his brother wordlessly loving a girl named Laura. Jake made Laura love him, impregnated and abandoned her.It’s also the story of fourteen years later with a high school boy named Ian, the son of the town doctor, hopelessly crushing on the much older Laura now married to Arthur.Altogether, it’s a story of destinies and of life throwing curve balls and changing plans and dreams. I really enjoyed the relationships between the characters. I would read more from this author.
    • 4/5
      Not a book that I couldn't wait to finish; picked up and read a section, set aside until I had time to read again. Strange, it wasn't exciting or 'unputdownable', the writing was beautiful and uncomplicated, story was interesting, the ending was satisfying. I loved it...will definitely read more by Mary Lawson. Recommend.... ..
    • 5/5
      This was a beautiful coming of age story set in rural northern Canada. Arthur and Jake are as different as brothers can be. Arthur takes after his father. He's a strong solid man who kind and helpful, but not a good student. His mother insists he stay in school, even though he knows an education won't help him on the Depression era farm. Jake, the younger brother, is smart, articulate and his mother's pride and joy. She can't see his cruelty and manipulation. One day Arthur is tasked with walking some cows to a nearby farm. While leading them over a rickety bridge, Jake plays around under the bridge, which leads to an incident that will haunt Arthur for the rest of his life.The Depression era story is interwoven twenty years later with a new narrator, Ian Christopherson, son of the local doctor. Ian has an adolescent crush on Arthur's beautiful wife, Laura, and decides their farm would be the perfect place for his summer job before heading off to college. Jake is nowhere around and no one mentions him. I loved this book but I can't put my finger on exactly why. It's a beautifully written, character driven human drama that echoes the story of Esau and Jacob, with each parent having a favorite. It's such a subtle book, yet filled with tragedy, humanity, and decency. I have to read something else by this talented author.
    • 5/5
      Lawson has done it again. I absolutely loved her debut novel Crow Lake and she did not disappoint me with this, her second novel. In fact, this was the perfect read to pull me out of my reading funk after having abandoned a book. Told through a shifting narrative, Lawson's characters come to life in a way that continues to astound me. Lawson adeptly captures the essence of time and place, the place being the fictional small Northern Ontairo town of Struan, a stone's throw away from the setting for [Crow Lake]. Family dynamics take the forefront in this story, but Lawson delves deeper to also provide an examination of the clashes/tensions of urban versus rural and indigenous populations and the more recent land settlers. Not surprisingly, Lawson admits on her website that she vaguely thinks of her three novels - the third one being Road Ends - as ‘The Crow Lake Trilogy’ or ‘The Struan Trilogy’ because they are linked in place and time and have several characters who appear in more than one book. Yes, Lawson's writing style and the loose weaving of her novels remind me a bit of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead books. Lawson employs quiet, reflective prose to convey a powerful coming of age story mired in moral quandaries, sibling rivalry, the devastating impact the second World War had on small farming communities and the sheer daunting influence of Mother Nature and her ability to isolate communities. The execution of this story is picture perfect and Lawson deserves a place of honor, IMO, alongside some of my favorite Canadian authors, such as Timothy Findley and David Adams Richards. What can I say... I tend to love books that have a tragic angle to them.Highly, highly recommended!
    • 4/5
      I read Jane Smiley's Thousand Acres not long ago and it's impossible not to compare with this as the communities in which they are set have lots of similarities. The difference is that Mary Lawson sketches a community that has real bonds - however much they shrink or break, life goes on, people strive or shrivel in the company of others - while Jane Smiley's emotional world focuses only on the individual penned into a horrific family life. Horrendous things happen to people, or are committed by people in Mary Lawson's world - indeed the devastation of WWII on the community is a central theme - but despite the passing of hurt and damage down the generations the world does move on.
    • 5/5
      The whole idea of rivalry between brothers is timeless and has been around since Cain and Abel's time. But this book, although dealing with this age-old topic has a certain agelessness about it. Mary Lawson handles the subject with skill and with grace. The book is set in Northern Ontario. It covers the lives of two brothers for almost fifty years. Arthur is the oldest and he is the slow, steady and trustworthy brother who likes nothing better than helping his father on the farm. Jake is the younger brother and he is a hedonist - charming and sunny but not trustworthy. The two brothers are always competing for something whether it's a mother or father's love, marks in school or even the same woman. This rivalry goes on for the duration of the book which is almost fifty years, and we know that we are inexorably being drawn to a terrible conclusion. This is a powerful story that is very well written, filled with apprehension, tension and deceit. But there is hope in this book as well and we see this as we see the drama unfold through young Ian's eyes. I couldn't put it down.
    • 5/5
      "He stood alone in the silence of the night, remembering. In his mind's eye he saw the two of them – always saw them the same, standing together, faces turned upwards. Clouds pale against the blue-black of the night. Stars cold and bright. The moon hanging there, pale and brilliant, clouds drifting across it like smoke. The sky and the silent land beneath it stretching on, and on, and on, so that he and his father were shrunk to almost nothing by the vastness of it." (233)Two brothers, Arthur and Jake Dunn, growing up on their family’s farm in the fictional community of Struan in northern Ontario in the 1930s, are polar opposites. Arthur is dependable, dutiful, and set to inherit the farm; Jake, the younger of the two, is handsome, insolent, and dangerous to know. When the beautiful Laura March moves to Struan, the fragile balance of the brothers’ rivalry is moved to teetering on the edge of catastrophe. Two decades later, young Ian Christopherson, son of Struan’s only doctor, is moved by his infatuation with Arthur’s wife to seek employment on the Dunn farm. The novel is fraught with deceit, rivalry, and obsession, played out over nearly half a century. The small northern community survives the Great Depression better than many, but not so World War II, which rocks it to its very core.The Other Side of the Bridge moves gently back and forth in time, each chapter opening with headlines from local newspaper, the Timiskaming Speaker, including month and year, which allow readers to place themselves easily within the story and within history. Lawson’s prose is just beautiful, creating, as the Toronto Star has noted, some of the “most quotable images in Canadian literature.” Highly, highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      This book is deceptively powerful and the last third read like a blistering thriller that had me on the edge of my seat and yet it’s Mary Lawson’s subtlety that is just so incredibly effective. For the setting, she returns to the rural northern Ontario area that was so evocative in her last book, Crow Lake.Jake and Arthur Dunn, sons in a farm family in the 1930s, are as different as night and day. Arthur, the older son, loves the farm, works hard to help his father with all the work that’s involved with the running of a farm, and is the dutiful son in every way. Younger brother Jake is the wise guy who attracts girls and finds school easy and to his liking and never met a farm chore he liked or was willing to do. He is also the apple of his mother’s eye and quite obviously her favorite. Flash forward twenty years and Ian Christopherson, teenage son of the town’s doctor, takes a part-time job on the Dunn farm, attracted by Arthur’s beautiful wife Laura. He’s a young man whose emotions have tied him in knots and much of the story points to an ultimate explosive situation.Tying the two generations together is WWII which has devastating and long-lasting effects on this small town. Lawson chose the sumptuous complexity and non-linear construction that I’ve come to really love as she moved back and forth in time telling first Arthur’s story and then Ian’s. Lawson’s prose is elegant, evocative and beautiful.”Her lips were quivering. You’d have thought after suffering such a loss nothing else would matter to her but that didn’t seem to be how it worked. She was fearful about everything now. It was as if she had finally seen the awful power of fate, its deviousness, the way it could wipe out in an instant the one thing you had been certain you could rely on, and now she was constantly looking over her shoulder trying to work out where the next blow might fall.” (Page194) The climax is staggering in both in its unexpectedness and emotional wallop and the denouement is absolutely pitch perfect, even if fairly predictable. Full of tenderness, compassion and humor, this spellbinding story of sibling rivalry is a gripping emotional roller coaster ride that will have you turning pages well into the night. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Great characters, believable events, and simply a memorable story. "Crow Lake" was excellent; this is just as good.
    • 4/5
      This was a surprising and haunting read about two very different brothers and the people around them, set in rural Ontario during the depression and then the violent years of WWII. Although a story about the brothers (quiet Arthur the famer; and charming, model-gorgeous Jake, the reckless layabout), I thought the most interesting character was Ian, a boy on the cusp of carving his future who finds Saturday work at Arthur's farm. Ian takes the job because he has a crush on Arthur's wife, Laura, but it ends up being so much more than that. I liked his journey, how he finds solace and understanding in the peace of the land, the horses and the simplicity of Arthur's life. We see Ian struggle with whether to become someone worldly or follow in his Father's footsteps and become the local (underpaid and overworked) general practice doctor. There is both a simple beauty and sadness to this novel, but I could not put it down. It wanders along like a stream and the reader also sees horrific glimpses of the war and its toll on average, agricultural people trying to survive with the great loss of so many men. Lawson feels like a throwback both in style and subject matter, but she is well worth seeking out. I did not give this book five stars because the ending felt a little overly dramatic, almost Hollywood, with Jake's bloated return to Arthur's farm and a gruesome and unlikely end to the brothers' relationship, but it is a small grievance. This is a great novel and I highly recommend it. It sticks with you for a while.
    • 5/5
      Usually when you describe a book as 'riveting' it's a thriller about spies or murder mysteries. Mary Lawson's THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE is neither, but it is as riveting a read as I've run across in quite a while. I bought the book because I'd so enjoyed her first novel CROW LAKE, which was simply superb. (I use that phrase, 'simply superb,' whenever I really like a book. So, sorry if you've seen it before, but it fits.) Well so is this one; in fact it might even be a bit better than her first. I kept thinking of Cain and Abel, or Essau and Jacob, but neither biblical parallel rally quite fits. Because Arthur and Jake are unique characters, and I know I won't soon forget them. And then there is Laura too, a beautifully drawn character, who also acts as a catalyst, who creates all that tension. And Ian, who is witness to everything and, later, participant. And I'm telling you right now, when you get down to those final pages, you will be wincing, because you've gotten to know these characters, and you just know there will be pain, there will be hurt, there will be - there IS - real genuine tragedy. And yet Lawson gives you some comfort in the epilogue. This is a story, set against the war years in Canada and also 10-15 years after the war. It plays like Greek tragedy, RIVETING Greek tragedy. Mary Lawson is a great writer. I'll be watching for her next book.
    • 4/5
      An interesting coming of age book. Sibling rivalry is at the heart of the story set partially during World War II in Canada. Weaving back and forth between present day (1940) and 1906 the author skillfully tells the tale of Arthur and Jake Dubbs- brothers who are as different as night and day. A quick read.
    • 4/5
      A series of stepping stones, trivial events each leading from one to the other. Move one and the outcome might be different. The 1930’s. A farm in northern Ontario. Two brothers growing up. Jake is the clever one, spoiled by his mother, the daring one. Arthur is as solid as the earth he plows, dependable, reticent. One day finds the two young men on a bridge. It is a day that will change their lives. Now it is the 1950’s and another young man, a teenager really, comes to the farm to help Arthur. And he, too, steps onto the first stone….This was a story of the interactions of two very different brothers and of the small events in lives that make up the greater whole. It is a story of place, and who belongs. It had me firmly in its gripe from the beginning. And I was pleased to find the Ms. Lawson had written another great book to follow her first, Crow Lake.
    • 4/5
      This is a book about quiet personal sacrifice and lost opportunity. It's about coming to terms with what you've got and the situation you've been handed. As such, it resonated with me, but the fact that most other people have given it similar ratings to me tells me that it has a quality quite apart from my personal response.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed Crow Lake and was delighted that Mary Lawson had written another novel. This was another great read, lots of different strands of the story being drawn gradually together until they converged at the end. Lots of good, well fleshed-out characters, and some particularly moving passages covering the war years and their effects on the inhabitants of the town.
    • 5/5
      This was a beautifully told story with an excellent ending. I loved the characters and the writing. One of my favourites.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyed this very much. Gentle but powerful.
    • 4/5
      Another great book by the author of "Crow Lake" where two brothers. who are complete opposites, try to live in the same family. One is very dominant and is his mother's favorite so can do no wrong and the other is more like his dad and wants to continue farming the land as past generations. A moving story that will keep you turning the pages until the end.
    • 4/5
      A quiet book. Mary lawson has a way of drawing the reader in. She describes a family and a town in northern Ontario and a situation that forever alters many peoples lives. I liked it, you get an excellet feeling of time and place.
    • 4/5
      This book is very much like the author's previous work, Crow Lake. The setting is the same: northern Ontario during the 1950's. Again there are two brothers at odds with one another, untimely death of parents, disappointment, tragedy and abandonment. Then the author wraps up the story with an "everything is going to be okay" ending.It's an engaging read, although there is this feeling of dark foreboding lying beneath the surface through the entire book. One of the things I did not like about the book is the author's treatment of female characters. In this book they are only accessories to the plot and are generally weak and unimportant characters in the unfolding of the story. The previous book did have a central female character that was reasonably well developed.
    • 3/5
      Another interesting book from new author, Mary Lawson. Like her previous book, Crow Lake, this story of a family takes place in a small town in northern Canada. I found the characters not as finely drawn as in her previous book, but I liked the way the story wound back and forth from the past to the present. A good portrait, I think, of small town life in the 1940s.
    • 5/5
      A fine story of the joys and sorrows of life, relationships and shocking events. Set in the author’s native Canada this book centres on the invented town of Struan. I use the word centres deliberately. The characters are fixed on their ‘place’ and the narrative reflects time and again the impact of life and the characters’ perceptions of life beyond their town. It is not only the characters who reflect, it was myself reading and taking in their point of view that made me ponder how differently the second world war must have seemed to those living lives so very far away, in such different circumstances. Much of Mary Lawson’s prose is almost understated yet at the same time tremendously powerful. She intertwines a sense of place with her characters’ sense of belonging and a way of life that may or may not continue. When Pete and Ian sit eye to eye with a myriad of dragonflies on a ledge formed of rock three billion years old, their communing with nature is almost palpable. The whole story encourages the reader to question the values by which we live and the influences that are brought to bear upon us as we make what turn out to be life changing decisions. As Ian thought about Jake following his return ‘it was hard to imagine Struan or anything in it being a part of Jake. He didn’t look as if he had ever belonged’. Yet Ian envied him, was taken in by his outward countenance and thought that he was ‘someone who had all the answers’.This novel painted a real sense of place for me, place in time and the changing nature of place for us all wherever we are. Pete, who had a breadth of knowledge and understanding that Ian admired, chose to stay in that sacred place to make sure the tourists did not find all the best places to fish. This book raises questions of sustainability for caring for our ‘place’, wherever that may be and however each one of us interprets that sense of place. An excellent book that will reverberate within me for some time.
    • 5/5
      I bought this book 7 months ago and just read it now. I actually didn't think I'd get through it because it's not the genre I like reading. I'm so glad I read it. I finished it in 5 days. It was a great plot with fascinating characters.
    • 4/5
      loved this book. It's one of those simple, quiet stories about familial relationships. For me, those types of stories can either go one of two ways: a bore/cliche or meaningful. Lawson's book was a page turner and touching. It also made me really glad that I didn't have any siblings! Sometimes a sibling relationship can be extremely complex and drive you up the wall as this book discusses. When I hear about things like this, I'm somewhat happy that I just have to deal with myself and my relationship with the 'rents. I was surprised to find that the characters were based in rural Canada, albiet a fictional town. That was interesting to me as I don't recall ever reading a book based in Canada. Much of the book takes place during WWII and it was eye opening to see how the Canadian were affected and their views on the war as well.
    • 5/5
      This is a story of human relationships: sibling rivalry, children of divorce, racism. It is about expectations and how we deal with them: Arthur who was reliable, Jake who was loved by his mother, Ian who wasn't enough to make his mother happy.The story is set during WW2, where two brothers, Arthur and Jake Dunn, aren't able to enlist (Arthur has flat feet and Jake limps). Arthur works on the family farm; Jake attends school. Arthur is solid and dependable; Jake is attractive and fun-loving. Their rivalry comes to a head over a new girl in town, Laura March, whom Arthur marries.The story is also set in the late 1950s/early 60s when Ian, the town doctor's son, takes a job helping Arthur on the farm. Mary Lawson is a brilliant writer. Like Crow Lake, she had me caring deeply for the characters and I literally had goosebumps readng the last chapters -- by then, I really knew these people and what happened to them seemed to almost happen to me, too.I hope there is a third book from Ms. Lawson soon!
    • 4/5
      In this follow-up to her acclaimed Crow Lake, Lawson again explores the moral quandaries of life in the Canadian North. At the story's poles are Arthur Dunn, a stolid, salt-of-the-earth farmer, and his brother, Jake, a handsome, smooth-talking snake in the grass, whose lifelong mutual resentments and betrayals culminate in a battle over the beautiful Laura, with Arthur, it seems, the unlikely winner. Observing, and eventually intervening in their saga, is Ian, a teenager who goes to work on Arthur's farm to get close to Laura, seeing in her the antithesis of the mother who abandoned his father and him. It's a standard romantic dilemma—who to choose: the goodhearted but dull provider or the seductive but unreliable rogue?—but it gains depth by being set in Lawson's epic narrative of the Northern Ontario town of Struan as it weathers Depression, war and the coming of television. It's a world of pristine landscapes and brutal winters, where beauty and harshness are inextricably intertwined, as when Ian brings home a puppy that gambols adorably about—and then playfully kills Ian's even cuter pet bunny. Lawson's evocative writing untangles her characters' confused impulses toward city and country, love and hate, good and evil.