Mr. and Mrs. Bridge cover art

Mr. and Mrs. Bridge

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Mr. and Mrs. Bridge

By: Evan S Connell
Narrated by: Joanne Woodward, Paul Newman
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About this listen

Mr. & Mrs. Bridge is the saga of a clean-cut, "upper-class" couple who increasingly find their post-WWII world and traditional belief systems challenged by a changing society. For Walter Bridge, an ambitious lawyer, and his wife, whose focus is her household, affluence and material comforts create a cocoon of community respectability that cloaks the void within.

Mr. Bridge is dominated by reason and common sense, but is vaguely aware that something is missing from his life. Mrs. Bridge, now that her children have grown up, is slowly going mad from boredom. They wonder why there is no joy. As adventurous, free-thinking friends introduce new ideas into their household, they come close to making tiny steps toward change. Will they be able to break free of their traditional roles?

Read by husband-and-wife actors, Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman—who starred in the 1990 film adaptation of Connell's novels—Mr. & Mrs. Bridge is a tour-de-force of contemporary American realism.

©1993 Evan S Connell (P)1993 Phoenix Books, Inc. Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature Marriage

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All stars
Most relevant
Clever to narrate two very different lives with empathy , never boring, empathetic and sometimes funny. Reflects the time of traditional households very well.

Emotionally intelligent

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I cannot believe that either of the narrators listened to the finished product and approved of the standard of the recording. While they both have wonderful tonal quality of voice, the recording was dreadful, so full of clicking and other undefinable sounds, especially in the second half, that only the excellence of E. S. Connell’s work made it possible to endure to the end. I almost gave up several times and I feel two eminent and and well loved actors have not been served well by the producers and technicians here.

Almost unlistenable

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How can this wonderful, funny, atmospheric, time-warped description of American lives, mainly in the 1930s have been so overlooked? Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward made an excellent film of it, and yet it is still hardly known in the UK. They have also made this joint reading which is perfect. I can't recommend it enough. Mrs Bridge, shy, respectful of the husband she knows to be so much cleverer than herself, ventures out on a wobbly path to learning and becomes afraid of her own son and daughters, who have opinions she could never have formulated, behaviour quite foreign to hers. She reminds me of all the ladies who came to tea with my mother during the War, and there is also something humble and beautiful about her which is worth rescuing, or at least admiring in our feminist state today. Instead of condemning her, shouldn't we simply observe how society slowly changed in Mr and Mrs Bridges' decades, and smile fondly at their lives ?

A brilliant, little-known story of a marriage

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Lack of any story. I kept waiting for something to happen or characters to develop.

Very boring

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