Both parents were readers, for their mother it was The Iliad and the Odyssey, for their father it was the Quarryman. The books are mentioned often and have great significance in the parents’ lives and that of the Dunbar boys. They were also great storytellers passing down to the boys not only their love of books but the stories of their own lives. Meet Markus Zusak on his US tour". Penguin-Random House. 2 October 2018 . Retrieved 10 November 2018. so im pretty sure that even an infinite combination of words will spectacularly fail in describing what this story means to me, because it has been nearly 12 hours since i finished reading this and i still am at a loss at how to convey the heartbreaking beauty of this book. I love Markus Zusak’s characters, especially these boys. Like Tim Winton, he seems to capture that wonderful mix of innocence and hope with the life-changing reality of tragedy and despair they can’t escape. Things happen that would bring the best of us undone. Bridge of Clay is a tender book, set in a world that is anything but. Its enormous ambitions are sustained by heartfelt beliefs, not least in the power of love. This vast novel is a feast of language and irony. Its narrative structure makes demands on the reader but it constantly works through tangled lives to achieve moments of sublime clarity and insight. It is such a compassionate book that it is hard not to fall a bit in love with it yourself. Bridge of Clay shares with Zusak's The Book Thief an underlying sense of the possibility of joy and human dignity even in dehumanising situations. It is driven by no agenda other than a desire to celebrate the ups and downs of flawed mortals. The makes it a breath of fresh air.' Sydney Morning Herald

We can’t do anything. One of us writes, and one of us reads. We can’t do anything but me tell it, and you see it.”

I was really confused in this book, more so in the beginning until I got used to how this was being written. The Bridge Of Clay is a book I will have to revisit time and again to get all of the tidbits that we miss at times. Especially in a book like this; family, sorrow, hope, change, love, death. It's life. It's death. It's a family both past and present. It's something I can't put into words, I just feel it. Matthew Dunbar – the oldest Dunbar boy, and narrator of the book. As the oldest brother, responsibility to take care of the family fell to him once their father left. there are times when you //think// you know what's going on bc a reference to something has been made and then it'll take a whole different turn and you'll be dropped off at Confusion Avenue Why does Clay feel strongly about building a bridge? What is the significance of bridge building for him? Zusak’s short sentences read like poetry and you often need to stop and take in the meaning behind the words.

Hunt, Jonathan (Winter 2018). "Bridge of Clay". The Horn Book Magazine. 94 (6): 95 – via General OneFile. Bridge of Clay, as earlier in The Book Thief, Zusak has succeeded in creating a story so vibrant and so real that the reader feels enveloped by it. Zusak's empathy and love for this flawed world permeate his writing and make this new book shine.' The Australian There are hundreds of thoughts per every word spoken, and that’s if they’re spoken at all.” ― Markus Zusak, Bridge of Clay Which cover art do you prefer?In March 2016, Zusak talked about his unfinished novel Bridge of Clay. He stated that the book was 90% finished but that, "... I'm a completely different person than the person who wrote The Book Thief. And this is also the scary thing—I'm a different person to the one who started Bridge of Clay eight, nine years ago ... I've got to get it done this year, or else I'll probably finally have to set it aside." [8] i'm REALLY big on books with themes of family and while that was the MAIN topic of the book, i couldn't even connect with the boys (i'll admit some parts were funny but they were too few and far between) bc THE WRITING WAS ALL OVER THE PLACE Markus Zusak pitches the reader into a ‘terrifically teenaged world’. Photograph: Brendon Thorne/Getty Images But while in other books you could have read the book in one sitting - with some effort -, here the journey of the Dunbar boys is also the journey of the reader, who has to convince himself to keep going at least five times only in the first half. Throughout The Book Thief the presence of Death is associated with colour, particularly white: “‘Some of you are most likely thinking that white is not really a colour,’ Death maintained. ‘Well I’m here to tell you that it is. White is without question a colour and personally I don’t think you want to argue.’” The same deathly whiteness irradiates the narrative of Clay’s story, as the merciless Sydney sunlight is variously described as “aspirin-white” or “collarbone-white”. Penelope, who emigrated as a teenager from eastern Europe, finds herself oppressed by “the mauling light here. This city. It was so hot and wide and white. The sun was some sort of barbarian, a Viking in the sky.”

Yes, I know I just finished reading this last night but I can't get it out of my head! I tried reading another book and just missed Zusak's writing so here I am again. and I have a feeling I'll understand and appreciate the story a LOT more this time. here goes!! I'm writing a book called Bridge of Clay—about a boy building a bridge and wanting it to be perfect. He wants to achieve greatness with this bridge, and the question is whether it will survive when the river floods. That's all I can say about it for now—not out of secrecy, but you just don't know what direction a book is going to take, no matter how well you've planned.But there are also lots of fun times as you would expect in a household of five boys. I loved Achilles the mule who felt that he too should live in the house, and there is a wonderful neighbour who comes by to fix them up when they have been fighting. Which is often. I just ran across John Boyne's review of this in the Irish Times, and I'm sure other readers will enjoy it, too. Publishers Weekly commented that Zusak builds tension skilfully by his use of foreshadowing and symbolism, which exposes the secrets of the story. They also praised his use of historical scope to create a "sensitively rendered tale of loss, grief, and guilt's manifestations". [10] Though praising the book for its symbolic weight, The Washington Post points out that the work is burdened by its two decades of rewriting and revising, claiming the story to be 'extravagantly over-engineered'. [4] The Guardian finds that much like his previous novel The Book Thief, Death plays a major part of this work—noting that 'death steals the show'. Noting that his use of colors often leads to "theatrical illumination", and that this work, unlike his former is "affirmatively full of life". [5]