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A review by eleanorfranzen
The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart
reread, April 2024
I bought this nine years ago on the strength of one review, and read it once. It has subsequently survived five house moves, testament to its extraordinary beauty and resonance. On a second read, the nature and extent of protagonist Telumee’s suffering—through family loss and marital discord—and the explicit connection that characters make between the poverty and hardship of Black life on Guadeloupe in the 1910s(?) and its history of slavery, both stuck out to me much more. At the same time, Schwarz-Bart’s writing is just so beautiful; she hits a rhythm in her sentences that feels musical, in the same inevitable-but-still-surprising way as Baroque counterpoint. And the novel’s emphasis on happiness in small places, on blooming where you’ve been planted (or re-planted, or transplanted), hasn’t faded. The Bridge of Beyond is a book with sadness in it, but it is not a sad book. One other of her novels has an English translation, Between Two Worlds (Ti Jean l’Horizon), but I don’t think it’s in print, which is a scandal. (French-language editions exist and I can read in French, but Schwarz-Bart deserves a much wider audience.)
I bought this nine years ago on the strength of one review, and read it once. It has subsequently survived five house moves, testament to its extraordinary beauty and resonance. On a second read, the nature and extent of protagonist Telumee’s suffering—through family loss and marital discord—and the explicit connection that characters make between the poverty and hardship of Black life on Guadeloupe in the 1910s(?) and its history of slavery, both stuck out to me much more. At the same time, Schwarz-Bart’s writing is just so beautiful; she hits a rhythm in her sentences that feels musical, in the same inevitable-but-still-surprising way as Baroque counterpoint. And the novel’s emphasis on happiness in small places, on blooming where you’ve been planted (or re-planted, or transplanted), hasn’t faded. The Bridge of Beyond is a book with sadness in it, but it is not a sad book. One other of her novels has an English translation, Between Two Worlds (Ti Jean l’Horizon), but I don’t think it’s in print, which is a scandal. (French-language editions exist and I can read in French, but Schwarz-Bart deserves a much wider audience.)