The Painted Bridge by by Wendy Wallace

Final Rating: 1.9/5

   
   The Painted Bridge supplies the reader with more of an emotional and symbolic view that lies heavily on the poetic messages of: love, hope, courage, faith, religion, and family. All wonderful and beautiful qualities and I applaud Ms. Wallace for blending this light with the background darkness of a Victorian Asylum, but sadly this combination became an overall beige tone in the end.

    First the positives and neutrals, the attention to historical research showed beautifully and blended seamlessly to create some interesting details. I believe the historical research saved the novel and final impression for this reader. The final messages of The Painted Bridge are uplifting but at the same time almost cross the lines into sappy fairytale. I am delighted to report to any potential reader, the lack of expletives or smut laced references (that I can recall at this moment- that was a pleasant surprise). The evident dark parts were tastefully done but were placed at the end and a lot of predictable filler or tedious build up had to be tolerated. In regards to the lyrical poetry of a few passages, I again applaud Ms. Wallace; her lines describing a descent into madness may move a few readers but also may confuse many (which brings me to the negatives).

    At times, The Painted Bridge tended to ramble and slow to a crawl in plot development and left unanswered questions from a few plot and character holes, because of this a lot of patience is asked of the potential reader. Along with that patience, the reader may be jarred out of a couple chapters by anachronistic phrases. Delving deeper, the heavy symbolism became tiring and caused this reader to look for side notes in the margins; also the fragmented poetic lines could be cryptic and caused me to read passages repeatedly to somehow grasp any hidden meaning. I still don't comprehend quite a few to be honest. In regards to the characters, character development and personalities were limited and a few cliché character traits showed up to my annoyance, many readers may laugh but the character's names (especially last names) were just wrong and silly to the story and the reader (again I refer back to the over saturation of symbolism and odd play with words). Finally, I'm sad to say that The Painted Bridge was predictable, heavy foreshadowing contributed to the predictability, any lingering suspense sagged in the middle and the mysteries that were introduced throughout were weak and concluded too quickly within a few chapters.

-Reviewed in August 2012, review written August 2012/ copy of THE PAINTED BRIDGE borrowed from local library