It is 1941. The Russians are closing in. When armed Czech partisans knock at her family's door one early morning in 1941, Lynette knows that she will be taken away, never to return. This haunting novel is told through the diary of 12-year-old Lynette who is growing up in a Europe ravaged by war, vividly portraying her sense of loss and the endless search for home.
Reviews
The Bridge Over the River is a beautiful, poignant book filled with quiet wisdom and perceptiveness. I was sorry to reach the last page.
Suzy Ceulan Hughes -gwales.com
This atmospheric, sensual and impressionistic novel... chronicles a side of war seldom written by victors or the vanquished,
The Western Mail
The first German publication of this book predated the wave of recent novels, memoirs and histories about the suffering and pain of the expulsion, which is currently a hot topic in Germany.
Times Literary Supplement
The novel The Bridge over the River is very sensitively written and the narrative is compelling. The reversal of stereotypes in the displacement of the German family and Lynette's chronicling makes it ring like a mirror image of Anne Frank. Lynette's innocence of political pressures comes through strongly. The family's eventual sufferings are somehow signalled in the forebodings in the early passages, but they are still shocking when they occur. The book would make a good basis for a film.
A reader's response