Edmund Lester

This is a difficult book to fully describe. If you'll indulge me I believe I know the best way of summarising The Bridge. Imagine a drunken conversation between Franz Kafka and Salvador Dali, one in which Dali challenges Kafka to write a book based on a few compulsory elements suggested by the painter. Firstly each of the three linked stories must start with an impossible encounter (a man meets himself, a woman meets a dead former neighbour and a teenage girl meets her future son). Each story must feature an antagonist with red hair, a mismatched item of clothing, a pursuit (mostly on foot) and all must end at the same place - on the bridge of the book's title. Oh, and nothing in any of the stories must make any real sense, although the main characters must, in the end, accept everything. That just about sums this book up. It gives a better overview than a direct explanation of the plot could. For all its weirdness it is beautifully written - Zoran Živković's prose is alwa...

As with every summer Drove is visiting Pallahaxi with his parents. This year however things are a little different. Drove is on the verge of manhood, and Browneyes, a girl he met the previous summer, is occupying the majority of his thoughts. However, just as Drove is becoming more involved in the world at large, the world is about to get involved in his life. His father is a Parl (a member of the government) and not at all happy that Drove is showing interest below his social standing, something about which Drove cares nothing at all. But as well as obstacles to his love life Drove and the entire world will have to contend with an infrequent astronomical even that plunges the whole world into darkness (and cold) for forty years - the Great Freeze. Like much British science fiction, this is bleak in ways American fiction rarely is. The further you get in the book the more you become certain that the ending is going to be anything but "happy-ever-after". This world is remarka...