Sunday, January 29, 2012

Book Review: The Bridge by Kay Bratt

Title: The Bridge
Author: Kay Bratt
Enjoyment Rating: 5/10
Referral: I'm a fan of Kay Bratt's facebook page (based on her book Silent Tears) and saw that this book was on sale for $.99 or $1.99 or something
Source: Kindle for iPad
Books I've read this year: 5

I feel bad even counting this book as a book since it took me about half an hour to read-- it's definitely more novella than novel, and I wonder if that plays a part in my slightly lower rating. Bratt tells the story of an old woman living in Suzhou, China who frequently finds abandoned children on the "lucky" bridge near her home. One morning, she finds a young blind boy waiting on the bridge, and although she tries to leave him at the orphanage like all of the other children she has found, she finds herself too attached to him to leave him.

When I read Silent Tears, I remember Bratt making the point that she did not want to reveal the name or the location of the orphanage she volunteered in, but reading The Bridge and Chasing China made it seem very likely that the orphanage was somewhere in southern Jiangsu province or in Shanghai. It hit very close to home for me since my daughter is also living in Jiangsu province. Bratt's novels are engaging, dramatic, simple, and very heartfelt. If you'd like to read a fictionalized account of a finder, I think this is the first one I've come across, and Bratt does a nice job getting into the head of that finder. Sometimes I felt like I was being taught or preached to, but overall nice work.

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