Mrs Bridge and Mr Bridge - Hardcover

Connell, Evan S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0141391553 ISBN 13: 9780141391557

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2012

Synopsis

This limited hardback edition brings together Evan S. Connell's brilliant novels Mr Bridge and Mrs Bridge. Thomas Heatherwick, who most recently designed the new London Routemaster Bus and the spectacular Olympic Cauldron, has specially created this beautiful and innovative interlocking edition, which is available in a limited print run of just 1000 copies. The books can either be read separately, or slotted together in a unique book sculpture. Renowned designer Thomas Heatherwick is famous for projects as diverse as the Seed Cathedral at the Shanghai 2010 World Expo, the East Beach Cafe in West Sussex and the flagship Longchamp store in New York.

A new edition of Evan Connell's Mr Bridge will be published in Penguin Modern Classics in February 2013 as a companion work to sit alongside Mrs Bridge. The Penguin Modern Classics edition of Mrs Bridge includes an introduction by Joshua Ferris; Mr Bridge will be introduced by Lionel Shriver.

The Bridges are an unremarkable and conservative couple who live in Kansas City with their three children. Mrs Bridge spends her time shopping, going to bridge parties and bringing up her children to have nice manners; Mr Bridge is an outwardly successful lawyer who only wants the best for his family. And yet sometimes both experience the vague, disquieting sensation that all is not well in their comfortable lives. In a series of comic, telling vignettes, Evan S. Connell illuminates the narrow morality, confusion and even terror at the heart of lives of plenty. Hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure, these two novels - told from both perspectives of the marriage - deserve their place amongst the classics of American twentieth-century fiction.

About this title

Review:

How it is done I only wish I knew (Dorothy Parker Esquire)

Very, very funny, often moving and sad, and written with an uncompromising realism that one rarely comes across. To me the Bridges were a revelation: I cannot recommend them too highly (Daily Telegraph)

About the Author:

Evan S. Connell was born in Kansas City in 1924. He wrote Mrs Bridge in 1959 and Mr Bridge in 1969, and was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement in 2009. He lives in New Mexico.

Thomas Heatherwick is the leading British designer responsible for the Seed Cathedral at the Shanghai 2010 World Expo, the flagship Longchamp store in New York, and the new Routemaster buses in London. His most recent project, the cauldron in the Olympic Park, was the centrepiece of the opening ceremony and received universal acclaim.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0141391553
• ISBN 13: 9780141391557
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 608