Walter Bridge, husband to India and father to three, is a successful lawyer in a Kansas suburb. The daily
dramas of his life only serve to illuminate his narrow prejudices and complacent outlook, yet he is also troubled by existential doubts, dark undercurrents of desire and a yearning for something forever out of his reach. In Mr Bridge, Evan S. Connell gives us a moving, satirical and poetic portrayal of a man who cannot escape his limitations and of a couple growing old together but unable, ultimately, to connect.

The companion novel, Mrs Bridge, telling the story from the other side of the marriage, is published in Penguin Modern Classics.

‘With a delicate and subtle irony, Mr Connell shows us, first from her, then from his point of view, the little daily dramas of this ordinary family. It is 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

Mrs Bridge, an unremarkable and conservative housewife in Kansas City, has three children and a kindly lawyer husband. She spends her time shopping, going to bridge parties and bringing up her children to be pleasant, clean and have nice manners. And yet she finds modern life increasingly baffling, her children aren’t growing up into the people she expected, and sometimes she has the vague disquieting sensation that all is not well in her life. In a series of comic, telling vignettes, Evan S. Connell illuminates the narrow morality, confusion, futility and even terror at the heart of a life of plenty.

The companion novel Mr Bridge, telling the story from the other side of the marriage, is also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

‘A perfect novel … Its tone – knowing, droll, plaintive, shuttling rapidly between pain and hilarity – elevates it to its own kind of specialness … One of those books that can suffuse a room with happiness when someone brings it up’ Meg Wulitzer, The New York Times

‘Intimate … affecting … a very funny book’ Joshua Ferris