Frederic Manning

Summary Selected by Michael Korda, the author, most recently, of ‘Muse of Fire: World War I as Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets.’ By Frederic Manning (1930) 1. All wars end in a war of words, as those who have survived on both sides tell their story. World War I is no exception. Books are still being written about it, more than a century after its end.

In Mrs. Bridge, Evan S. Connell, a consummate storyteller, artfully crafts a portrait using the finest of details in everyday events and confrontations. With a surgeon's skill, Connell cuts away the middle-class security blanket of uniformity to expose the arrested development underneath — the entropy of time and relationships lead Mrs. Bridge's three children and husband to recede into a remote silence, and she herself drifts further into doubt and confusion.