The Broken Bridge

Rating:
Summary: A compelling, powerful story about a girl's search.Excellent
Review: I have already given away my copy and will buy several more, because this is an enormously insightful, moving story of a 16 year old girl of mixted parentage, who lives with her white father and looks for her black mother. She uncovers a complex world of betray, loss and also beauty, finding herself in the end. This is a beautifully written, poignent story, full of thought, feeling and action. It is written for teenagers, but can be enjoyed by adults. It could make a very powerful film. Strongly recommended. Titus Alexander

Rating:
Summary: Good but not great
Review: Not up to the same standard as 'His Dark Materials' but it's aimed at a different market, I guess.

I found the writing good, creating that dreamlike, unreal, almost nightmarish feeling when your world is suddenly turned upside down.
The book grips you and you feel dragged along with our heroine as she tries to make sense of what is happening and the 'visions' she has; the only failing is the ending which seems a bit of an anticlimax.

Nevertheless, a very good read.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book!
Review: The Broken Bridge is a beautifully written book about a girl named Ginny Howard, who is one of the very few black children in Wales. Ginny lives with her father, striving to reach her goal of becoming an artist. Then she finds out that she has a white half-brother named Robert. Even worse, she is illegitimate. Knowing that her father may not be telling her the whole truth about her own life, Ginny decides to find out all that she can about herself and her mother. The plot is embellished with Ginny's unique ideas about herself and also her artistic views. This book was very inspiring and I find that I can associate many of the things discussed in it with my own life. I am definitely better off from reading it.

Rating:
Summary: An artist's way...
Review: This is a wonderful book. I think it will resonate with many readers, who might relate to it even though the circumstances are unique.

Philip Pullman has a powerful gift. It convinces us to not only enter into the minds of his protagonists with sympathy, but to emerge actually caring about them. I really miss Ginny now, having finished the book. I try, in my imagination, to watch her grow up. I think she'll be brilliant, just like many of the readers who can relate to her and her step-brother.

As you begin reading the book, you're not told a whole lot; and I liked that. It made me more alert to cues in her thinking, watching her moods and the things that happen around her that she doesn't quite pay enough attention to.

On the other hand, the things she *does* notice are with the eyes of an artist, and one with a creative imagination. Readers who also like to draw and paint will find lots to like about the way Ginny thinks. It's a view of an artist's way, from an artist himself... and just like the best art, it moves something in us in a very subtle but profound way.

The book deals with feelings of isolation, which many of us encounter through race issues but everyone *could* understand, given a writer like Pullman. And then there's the matter of growing up. What happens when Ginny's secure world seems too small, but getting out of it is too scary? What happens when what she thinks she knows is not half of what's really there beneath her nose? Pullman makes her story a lot like our own story. We're hooked.

Her growing awareness of others' lives, her ability to move from a genuine and thoughtful sympathy to actual empathy - putting herself in their shoes, rather than looking at their shoes from her perspective, so to speak - is handled so well, I can't help but think we readers all benefit too.

Rating:
Summary: A good book for people who like none-action books
Review: This is an exelent book. It lets you in to the mind of Ginny, a sixteen year old who is trying to get through life in Whales with black skin. You want to cry and laugh right along with her. It has a surprise at every twist and turn, which will keep the reader wrapped up in it for hours. An altime good book!

Rating:
Summary: It was slow to start but hard to put down!
Review: This was nice and yet it was slow to begin with. I enjoyed it very much. I have read almost all his other books and am hoping to get the one coming out in January. I got so into this book it took me one night to finish it.