“Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.”

The finest footbridge in Peru, the bridge of San Luis Rey, breaks and five people die. Brother Juniper witnessed the tragedy and is resolved to investigate and understand why those five met with that fate.
Doña María and Pepita. Esteban. Uncle Pio and Don Jamie.

Beautifully written, with flowery language and a strong sense of place and people of Lima and the places around it. Definitely glad that I finally read this!

And what an ending!:

"But soon we shall die and all the memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." ( )

This book is so good that even a strong conclusionary atheist and antitheist like myself is not annoyed by the meaningless, and in any case faint, religious framing. ( )

This book is an odd, delightful treat that won’t take up too much of your time. It’s that weird ice cream flavor you try (maybe lobster or sweet potato) that ends up becoming a personal favorite.

In a Peruvian mountain pass, a seemingly sturdy and reliable rope bridge snaps, sending five souls to their deaths. A Franciscan friar sets out to find out why these five should have died and not someone else, looking for a way to justify to man the divine plan he’s so sure of at work in the world.

What follows is a neat little story delving deep into the lives of three individuals in their time leading up to the fatal bridge collapse. There is Dona Maria, an aging great lady who’s desperate for the love of her aloof daughter, the young Esteban dealing with his strained relationship with his twin brother, and old Uncle Pio, an elderly scoundrel who discovered a peasant girl and raised her into a prodigy of the Spanish stage. While all these stories are intriguing and thought provoking on their own, the ending and what it has to say about the meaning of life and death is what truly makes this a classic worth revisiting.
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Deliziosi i primi due capitoli - il secondo in particolare.

Il resto, pur bello, m'e' parso un po' piu' di maniera. ( )

Ma il pensiero che colpi’ frate Ginepro fu un altro: “Perche’ e’ toccata a quei cinque?”. Se esiste nell’universo qualche piano, se nella vita umana v’e’ un disegno, certo lo si puo’ scoprire, misteriosamente latente, in quelle vite cosi’ improvvisamente trovate. O noi siamo vivi per caso, e per caso moriamo, o viviamo secondo un piano, e secondo un piano moriamo. (13)

La Natura e’ sorda. Dio e’ indifferente. Nulla di quanto l’uomo fa puo’ cambiare il corso delle leggi. Allora, a qualche angolo di strada, Dona Maria si fermava presa da un vortice di disperazione, e, appoggiatasi al muro, spasimava di uscire da un mondo che non ha alcun disegno. Ma tosto la fede nel grande Forse insorgeva dal piu’ profondo del suo essere, e si dirigeva verso casa di corsa, ... (44)

Vi risparmiero’ le deduzioni di frate Ginepro: le incontriamo ad ogni passo. Egli credette di vedere, nella grande catastrofe, i perversi colpiti dalla distruzione e gli innocenti chiamati giovani in Cielo. Gli parve di vedere l’orgoglio e la ricchezza confusi come un esempio al mondo, e gli parve di vedere l’umilta’ incoronata e ricompensata, a edificazione della citta’. Ma frate Ginepro non rimase soddisfatto delle sue ragioni. (132)


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