Rating: 
Summary: beautiful in its simplicity
Review: The language of this book is melting, like warm sunlight on a wooden surface. At times the story is heartbreaking. Esteban being torn from his twin and the hopeless love a mother holds for her daughter. However, always there is the beauty of the language that Wilder uses to convey his story and meaning to his readers. The lives of the characters within are all intertwined in one way or another and it is fascinating to discover how.
Rating:
Summary: the bridge
Review: The Bridge of San Luis Rey takes place during the early 1700's. A famous bridge called the Bridge of San Luis Rey collpases and takes the lives of 5 people. A monk named Brother Juniper witnesses this tragedy and tries to figure out "Why those five?". Each chapter delves into the lives of the victims before their death. "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" is a fairly short book with difficult, but vivid vocabulary words. I had to reread a couple of passages to interpret the message but if you understand what is happening, this book becomes very interesting. As the lives of the victims are being unraveled, the mystery is being uncovered: "Is it an act of God that took their lives, or is it fate?"
Rating: 
Summary: Translation?
Review: This is a great piece of American 20th century fiction. Wilder is best known for Our Town, but won the Pulitzer for this work. One reviewer -- "Whitaker"-- seems to believe Wilder's book was originally written in Spanish and is a piece of Latin American "folklore". Of course readers who read the back cover will know that Wilder was born in Wisconsin and as American as apple pie. The book was not translated into English, it was written in Wilder's brilliant american prose. A must-read.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This book was fabulous. I picked for summer reading because it was short, but it turned out to be wonderful. I highly reccomend it to any high school student who needs a fast, short book.
Rating:
Summary: What Does it Mean?
Review: A short, sweet novel. Greater minds than mine awarded it a Pulitzer Prize, so I won't blabber on about its quality. Wilder wastes few words, inserts no extra padding, to tell his story. This lacks the action sequences and suspense of Tom Clancyish pulp, but does sneak up on the intellect, leaving the reader expectantly looking for the subtle connections that weave the characters together. The manifest story is simple. Five people have fallen to their death in Peru, and Brother Juniper seeks to prove the goodness of God by evaluating their lives to demonstrate exactly why bad things happen. Gently satirical, Wilder consigns poor Brother Juniper to a fitting end, for the chutzpah of attempting to decipher the mind of God with a moral calculus. Juniper has forgotten his Master's admonition, to "judge not." Hidden from Juniper's attempt to make sense of tragedy lay connections that he could never imagine, longings, love unrequited, and loneliness unimaginable. In the end, we learn, not WHY bad things happen, but the power and beauty that can rise from the ashes of tragedy. Wilder tells snippets of stories, weaving lives together, in a way that goes unnoticed at first, then becomes subliminal, and finally explodes into consciousness at the end. While these lives and their interconnections are somewhat contrived, they effect a transformation, both of the story-line and the reader by the end of the book. Well worth reading a second time.
Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: A past reviewer indicated that the book attempted to say, "...". I don't believe this book attempted to say anything, in and of itself. One is tempted to read the last line of the novel and attempt to extract its meaning. Don't do that. Although it reads like a declarative, it is not. When one writes, one likes to wrap up with a beautiful line, and Thorton Wilder has done just that; but it is not THE statement. How could it be? It contradicts so many things that have come before. Okay, so if you haven't read the novel, you're totally confused. Simply put, however, this novel is beautiful, insightful, and has a depth that is uncanny considering the leaness of the work. If you've read it once, and it took you 5 hours or so (which is reasonable), I assure you, you have missed a great deal. Read it again. It is that kind of book. One can, and perhaps should, read this novel sporadically over the course of a lifetime and be surprised by what is new within it every time. Certain songs are like that, and movies too. Art of course. Anything with depth. That being said, however, don't be scared off if you only wish to spend 5 hours and nothing more. The characters will stay with you, and you will be glad to have taken the time. There are some truths here, but I assure you, they are truths that we can all see clearly; Brother Juniper's question, like any of the great questions, remains just that, a question.
Rating: 
Summary: A timeless classic, and one of life's great questions
Review: The Bridge Of San Luis Rey is appropriately categorized as a timeless classic of literature. After a bridge collapses in Peru, killing five people, a priest begins to explore their lives in hopes that he might find some indication of why God chose these five people to die. In doing so, he explores one of life's great questions. He arrives at no clear answer, and yet his intellectual journey leaves the reader with a sense that life is not without meaning. For while we may not be able to explain why these lives ended so abruptly, or whether God even played a role in their fate, we see that each led a unique, special existence. In the end, the moral of this story is abundantly clear - that life is short and must be cherished.
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Summary: love, death and God: is there a connection? No answer given.
Review: Overall a nicely written, and easily read book, of the type that is good to take on a plane trip: could be finished in one 5-hour flight. The plot is given by other reviews here, but the conclusions are uncertain - and what do you expect? These are the questions we grapple with for most of our lives - usually without an answer. Apparently, brother Juniper concluded that the five people who died on the bridge did so by coincidence - but was it, really? For three out of five, death coincided with either lost love, or a determination to reacquire one. The two poor children got there somehow; their stories are not completely developed. The most beautiful short passage is in the end of the book: the people are dead, and soon even the memory of them will be gone - but they have loved, and this was enough. It sounds romantic, but I don't think it is - the love was fraternal or parental - including Uncle Pio's, although he was not Camella's "biological" father. There are better books to read, but this one is fairly enjoyable.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written, beautifully read
Review: This slim little novel employs a fairly typical literary technique--a random event, in this case the collapse of a bridge in Peru--results in the death of five people. The novel explores the lives of the five, which touch each other in subtle ways. The ultimate question asked is whether God "planned" that this particular five be on the bridge that day to meet their fate. I don't think that question is answered, but a more profound one--whether each person's life is unique and meaningful--is answered with a resounding YES. The unabridged audio version of this book is excellent. Sam Waterston reads clearly and simply, and conveys a tone of respect for each of these diverse lives. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: beautiful and romantic
Review: Thornton Wilder is best known for Our Town, a romantic and mythologizing image of America, the United States. The Bridge of San Luis Rey is an equally lovely, mythologizing treatment of a place as exotic to him as to his readers - colonial Peru. In both cases he seems to be trying to grasp the essence of a society. It's romance, not realism. If this book moves you as it did me, next read the book Wilder used as his own inspiration: Ricardo Palma's Tradiciones Peruanas, available in English translation. An attempt by a 19th-century Peruvian to distill his nation's past in tales and prose-poems.
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