The Broken Bridge

Title: The Broken Bridge
Author: Philip Pullman
First Published: January 1, 1990
Publisher: Open Road Media
Pages: 218
Genre: Coming of Age, Contemporary, Young Adult
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley
Rating:


Synopsis:

At 16, Ginny finds that her love of painting connects her to the artistic Haitian mother she never knew and eases the isolation she feels as the only mixed-race teen in her Welsh village. When she learns she has a half-brother by her father's first marriage, her world is shattered. Ginny embarks on a quest for the truth that will allow her to claim her artistic heritage--and face her father.

Buy the Book: Amazon

---

Review

Ginny is half Haitian, half Welsh, and lives in a small, isolated village where the overwhelming majority of the population is white. She experiences a steady stream of racism and feels trapped in a grey area between black and white. As a mixed woman, I found myself relating to Ginny on a deeply personal level, having gone through the very same struggles in my youth.

The first half of the book is admittedly slow, it took a while for me to really get into it. The writing was good, exceptionally so, but the plot felt lost. I realized why this was once the story really got rolling: the plot seemed lost because Ginny herself feels lost as she searched for her place in the world. To cope Ginny creates her own world through art, but even in the world of painting she finds herself dealing with questions of race.

From my own experience being mixed race living in a predominantly white neighborhood, I felt a certain level of embarrassment about familial aspects that seemed eccentric to me. I grew out of it as I got older as I came to accept both sides of my heritage. Ginny is on that same journey, to overcome the microaggressions that she has internalized and to learn more about the part of her heritage that she didn’t get to grow up with. At times I do still feel lost, like I don’t truly belong to either my white half or my Asian half and it has been a pain point, so I appreciated seeing this reflected well in the novel.

The second most important aspect of the story deals with familial relationships. The struggles between husband and wife, the bond between parent and child, the companionship between siblings, and the blurry line between friends and lovers. The relationships in this small town are complicated, the people are complex and incredibly flawed. The characters are constantly challenged to face their mistakes, to learn to forgive themselves and to forgive others, and to begin rebuilding the broken bridges between family. This book is an absolute treasure.

Quote

Content Warnings

About the Author