Alexander's Bridge - finished #25

I had kind of sat this book aside for a little while, while I was finishing the McCain book and while the election was taking place.  I liked it, but not as much as other novels by Cather.

It is about the main character Bartley Alexander who is a famous bridge builder.  He is middle aged and married to Winifred a women he loves but still has an almost desire to look elsewhere.  While on a trip to London, he becomes reacquainted with Hilda a former love and he falls back in love with her.  The love he feels for Hilda is not just for her though but also for the sense of youth they had previously and kind of what he sees as missing in his life.

He tries to break it off with Hilda on the 3rd trip to London but is too weak to do so.  Hilda had never married and feels Bartley is her one true love and basically tells him she cannot bear to lose him completely.  She will take whatever he can give her.  He says he has become 2 separate persons and the one that loves Hilda he fears will take over his life.  It is a true struggle for him.

He has returned to the US and is having problems with a couple of bridges being built, one is a labor problem and the other suddenly becomes a structural problem.  Once to the bridge with the structural problem, he examines and starts to pull the workers off the bridge.  While doing so the bridge collaspes and eventually in a struggle to get to shore with the workers while in the river, Bartley drowns.

It is written in Cather's style, where a chapter will explain a point in time and then the next chapter leaps ahead a few months.  This is Cather's first novel so it is interesting that this style of hers was from the beginning of her writing of novels.  I would recommend other Cather novels to a person before this one.  It is a good read but not like a normal novel by her.  To get a real feel for Cather, I think Oh Pioneers or My Antonia would be the ones to start with and then Alexander's Bridge or my favorite Death Comes to the Archbishop.