The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
I'd never seen the movie before. Always assumed it would be boring and saccharine. But when I was checking out the selection at a Park City, Utah coffee shop/bookstore, I decided to give it a whirl.
On the plane, I offered it to my seatmate when she appeared to run out of reading material. She politely declined, then asked me incredulously, "You haven't read it yet? You have to!" She said it's a quick read.
So I read it a few days later. She did not tell me that it would get into the fabric of my being and that I would sit here rocked, exposed and raw, hours after finishing. But I have a feeling she knew, and she thought it would be a good thing.
On the surface, it is kind of a boring story. A roving photographer for National Geographic shows up in the sleepy country in Iowa looking to shoot the seven covered bridges in the area. He asks a housewife for directions, and they have a spark. They have an affair and then she opts to stay with her family (who were currently out of town), rather than run away with him.
But there's something wholly unquantifiable about this story, and how it's written. I felt everything deeply, and it was gentle in how it delivered. It was huge but it was humble. It was greater than its parts but it had little fancy language. It was simple but life-altering.
General consensus: Absolutely beautiful.
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