Bridge of Clay

The Dunbar boys, Matthew, Rory, Henry, Clay, and Tommy, live alone. After their mother died, their father left, driven away by his grief. Matthew, the oldest and the narrator, tells the story of how the five Dunbar brothers survived. Within multiple timelines, Matthew lays out the lives of his parents, Michael and Penelope, including how they met, how they raised their sons, and how it all fell apart. These flashbacks are interspersed between the main story, Clay’s story.

After a four-year grief-fueled disappearance, Michael returns to the Dunbar home to discover his sons have grown up without him. He asks for their help to build a bridge, but Clay is the only one willing to reconnect with his father. Clay is a mostly silent main character, and his story is told from Matthew’s point of view. Yet, beneath Clay’s quiet exterior is a boy who loves deeply—his brothers, his parents, and the girl Clay loves, Carey. Clay’s grief overflows into action, building both a physical and metaphoric bridge.

Bridge of Clay highlights the importance of storytelling. Matthew’s narration is influenced by stories told by Clay, their parents, and those told by Carey. The scenes that took place before Matthew was born are told using an omniscient point of view, allowing readers to understand the thoughts, emotions, and desires of other characters. Bridge of Clay is a book about leaving home and learning how to return, about grief and how it brings some people closer together while tearing others apart, and about the love brothers share for each other. The story also offers hope for reconciliation between the Dunbar boys and their father.

In the present timeline, sixteen-year-old Clay leaves home to help his father build a bridge, a decision that divides the Dunbar household. When he returns months later, the bonds between the brothers begin to grow stronger. Even as the Dunbar brothers are trying to understand why their father abandoned them in the midst of their grief, the love they have for each other is an almost tangible thing. Zusak creates realistic teenage boys, who are messy and violent. Despite the heavy topic, there are moments of fun, as expected in a home with five boys.

While this epic tale contains little action, the writing is poetic, strange, and beautiful. Although this is a slower read, the short chapters and flowing language ensure that it is never boring. The plot shifts quickly between timelines, and connections between the past and the present are made masterfully, weaving together platonic love, romantic love, young love, and old love. Even as Matthew is the one typing these words, every character’s language appears on the page, and every character’s story is vital to the book. Readers will be drawn to the precision of the language, as almost every line holds significance, much of which is revealed later through memories of the past.

Sexual Content

• Rory thinks about a girl with whom he had a physical relationship. He remembered, “he pulled a long strand of girls’ hair from his mouth. . . she lay open-legged in Rory’s head.”
• Clay watches an older boy with his girlfriend. “[Clay] didn’t mind the way they touched and sort of smudged each other, either—her crotch on his thigh, a leg each side.”
• Clay imagines Carey kissing him. “She came closer and began; she put her bottom lip on his top one, and held the book between them.”
• In the past, Michael and Abbey, his first girlfriend, made out in Abbey’s bedroom, and it is implied that they had sex. Abbey “held his hand and helped him with everything: the buttons, the clips, the descent to the floor. . . there was carpet and heat of shoulders and backs and tailbones. . . There was breath—her breath—and falling, just like that. And embarrassment. . . The sweat between each breast.”
• As young adults, Michael and Abbey are in bed together. “She’d roll onto him and kiss his stomach. . . She’d kiss and kiss again, across and over, up toward his ribcage.”
• Michael and his future wife, Penelope, kiss. “He didn’t know how or why, but he put the other hand on her hip bone, and without thinking, he held her and kissed her.”
• Henry and Rory talk about a peer’s body. “You know—the one with the lips. . . You mean the tits.”
• At the end of the book, Clay and Carey sleep together. They are teenagers. “They’d broken the unwritten rules. There was the feel of her naked legs. He remembered the laid-down length of her. . . and how she moved and gently bit him. And the way she’d pulled him down.”

Violence

• Matthew refers to his father as “the Murderer,” but he didn’t actually murder anyone.
• Clay runs on the track, while other boys try to stop him. It’s a way to train, and Clay believes that it makes him faster. “Business-like, they converged. . . It was a fist across his throat, an ample chest against his back. . . [Starkey] even pinched him as they went kicking and a-gouging in the blood and the shove. . . There was collision between boy and ground.” The scene lasts over four pages, and Clay is left bruised and bleeding, but not seriously injured.
• A snake bites Michael’s dog. “There was nothing now but body and jaws, open-eyed death, and he kneeled in the backyard sunshine.” The dog dies.
• Penelope gets in a car crash and breaks her nose. “The car was crashed into from the side, like a demon had taken a bite. Penelope’s ribs were ruptured. Her nose was slapped and broken; her face hit the head of the dash.”
• Clay leaves home with his father. When he returns, Matthew is angry that he left and beats Clay up. “But now those thoughts weren’t thoughts at all, they were clouds of landed punches, and every one fell true. . . It was blood and hurt and getting up, and going down, till Rory called out enough.”
• In an effort to divert Matthew’s violent intentions toward Clay, Henry gets himself beat up by mimicking one of Clay’s training sessions. He runs a lap around the track, and his friends beat him up to try to stop him from finishing. “Then a bloodied, grinning face. . . he was so drunk and beaten up he’d almost crawled.” Henry had been drinking and fell unconscious, but he was not seriously injured.
• During the boys’ childhood, their mother punished them for getting muddy. Penelope throws a shoe at Henry. Their mother “gave it to us on the arms, on the legs. . . till finally she’d splintered two of the spoons, and threw a boot down the hall instead. . . hitting Henry, a thud in the face. His mouth was bleeding, and he’d swallowed a loose tooth.”
• While in middle school, a classmate, Jimmy Hartnell, bullies Matthew because he plays the piano. Jimmy “nippled me in those toilets, and his punches bruised my groin.” Matthew fights back. “First I was caught in the mouth (like chewing on a piece of iron), then up, and into the ribs. . . I blocked the third punch outright, and clobbered him on the chin. . . I knocked him down twice, but he always came punching back. By the end I’d gone down four times myself, and on the fourth I couldn’t get up.”
• Clay runs barefoot on the track, and his feet get cut up by broken glass. “There was glass all over the track. Clay hadn’t even seen it, and he didn’t notice the blood. Later, it took us hours to pick the pieces out.”

Drugs and Alcohol

• There is underage drinking throughout the book. Henry and his friends drink at the track while Clay runs. “They drank in that adolescent way, all greedy-mouthed and wide open.”
• Rory comes home drunk. “As for Rory, he weighed a drunken ton, but they somehow slung him to bed.”
• While Penelope is sick, Michael and Penelope smoke cigarettes. “They smoked, they coughed. . . their smoking was amateur at best.”
• While in high school, Rory brings alcohol to school in an attempt to be expelled. Rory tells Matthew and his teacher, “It’s just a beer, I don’t see what you’re all so upset about.”
• Right before she dies, Penelope takes her underage sons to a bar and buys them all beer. “As the oldest, it was only [Matthew] who made it through [his] drink, and it was quite an effort, I’m telling you. Rory and Henry each had half. Clay and Tommy managed the froth. . . [Penelope] stayed till she’d finished them off.”

Language

• Profanity is used frequently. Profanity includes goddamn, hell, shit, bastards, fuck, and bitch.
• Matthew often uses Jesus and Jesus Christ as an exclamation. “Jesus! What was it about our house? It brought out the blasphemy in everyone.”
• British curse words are used fairly often, including bloody and prick.
• Henry and Rory talk about Starkey’s girlfriend’s “tits.”

Supernatural

• None

Spiritual Content

• None

by Abigail Clark