The Last Bridge

I have been looking forward to reading this book since Julie's review a few months back. As always, I'm not quite sure where to begin. To me The Last Bridgeis a mystery more than anything else that reads a lot like a memoir. It is told by Cat, an alcoholic trying to forget her past, as she tries to decipher what her mother's cryptic suicide note means.

This book was a hard one to read, not in prose but in subject matter. It deals with physical and sexual abuse by a parent. Ms. Coyne did a fantastic job of writing this story from the abused's point of view. Cat was truly amazing to know. She started out as a wary teenage, constantly hiding from her abusive father. She experiences love in the form of a slightly older family friend who comes to stay with her family. Her only protector is her older brother Jared. Her sister, for all intents and purposes, is pretty useless to her. Although her mother tries to do what she can to help her, I couldn't help but feel that as long as it was Cat getting the abuse and not her, she was totally fine with that.

And then it happens, that one thing that Cat can't hide from. That one thing that completely destroys her life. And gone is the teenager and in her place is a scared woman whose only way of coping with her past is to drown it in a bottle of booze.

This novel is incredible on all accounts. I loved the memoir feel to it. After I was finished reading it, I wanted to go online and google Cat. I wanted to know what she was up to, if she was able to change her life for the long haul. I wanted to know if she kept in touch with Jared, if she found her happy ending with Addison. I lost count of how many times I told myself she wasn't real, that she was just a character made up by a woman with an incredible gift. And what a gift Ms. Coyne has. She writes in a way that you can't take you eyes off the page. You want to know what happens next.

I definitely recommend this novel to anyone who has the courage to look inside the broken. Who is not afraid of the truth, no matter how startling it may be. I usually include a quote from the novel in my review. There are many to choose from in this book, but I think the one the author herself picks says it best...

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open. - Muriel Rekeyser.

And what a truth it is. ( )

Wow. That's all that came to mind when I finished this book. I'm still shaking my head thinking about it. Brutal. This story was incredibly brutal. Heartbreaking. Tragic. Desperate. Sad. Redeeming. Uplifting.I picked this book up over a month ago, read the first chapter and put it down. I didn't pick it up again until last Saturday. Not because the storyline didn't grab me, but rather life got in the way. Once I picked it back up, I couldn't put it down. I just had to know what happened next. Most times I regretted finding out.I was shocked at how few pages there were. So much happened that it seemed like there should have been more. The author covered a lot of ground with a few words. Many times, I had to close my eyes to try and block out the images that formed in my mind. I didn't want to see it but I couldn't help it. The author burned this story into my brain.I've read a lot of good books. Some I would even consider great. Very few garner five star ratings from me, but this one did. If you only read one book the rest of the year, make it this one. ( )

This wasn't a badly written book, but I'm giving it a fairly low rating because I just didn't enjoy it that much.

SPOILER ALERT:

The subject matter is challenging - a highly dysfunctional family ruled by an alcoholic father who is physically and sexually abusive. Obviously, that sort of a story is not going to be easy or fun to read, but in this case I found myself unable to make a connection with any of the characters, which made it difficult for me to enjoy the book. The narrator, one of the daughters who was abused, is herself an alcoholic, and I found myself unable to sympathize with her as much as I probably would have otherwise. The central mystery, the cryptic message "he's not who you think he is" which is introduced in a suicide note, was also just not that interesting. But probably the thing that sticks with me the most is that there was no moment in the book where I felt uplifted, or where there was anything that happened that really redeemed all of the utter crap that had come before. The book did read like something which certainly could have happened - and surely has, many many times in a great many families - but as a work of literature, I felt it fell a bit flat. ( )

After ten years of running from her past, Alex "Cat" Rucker returns to her Ohio hometown to deal with the aftermath of her mother's suicide. In a cryptic suicide note, Cat's mother says only "He isn't who you think he is..." leading Cat on a tumultuous path to wonder who her mother was referring to. Is it Cat's abusive father? Jared, the brother Cat's grown distant from? Andrew, the overly friendly county coroner? Or perhaps Addison, Cat's first love? With questions and suspicions driving Cat towards her usual solace at the bottom of a bottle, the story unfolds in present and in the memories of Cat's childhood creating a captivating work.

I'm always a bit hesitant to read stories that deal with themes of alcoholism, broken homes or child abuse, but Teri Coyne weaves a powerful and engrossing story in The Last Bridge. The subject matter was difficult to face but the story is not without a ray of light. Coyne shows that choices are ultimately the definition of character and Cat's journey is one that will stay with the reader even after the book is read. ( )

Cat's storied, abuse-filled childhood probably forms the most solid content of this novel, rather than the present-day happenings that are described. It is therefore easier to get pulled into her past and to lose a bit of the present-day action, which creates a bit of imbalance in the novel. Finding about her past is crucial, of course, but it seems like the same intensity of emotion in the scenes of the past isn't present in the present day.

I'm divided on whether Cat's personality is supposed to feel very hardened or if the character just comes off as somewhat detached. I can see that she'd need to feel hard, but sometimes she just feels distant. It's hard to make an immediate identification with her.

The ending is satisfying. Without going into detail, it defies conventional endings and goes for a little something else instead. The change is refreshing.

All in all, it's good for a quick read on a day off. There's not too much to dig deeply into, and it moves fairly quickly. The plot isn't terribly complicated, so you'll find nothing to get in the way of a decent read. ( )