After the end of World War II, he graduated from the University of Kansas in 1947, with a B.A. He started undergraduate work at Dartmouth College but joined the Navy in 1943 and became a pilot. He graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City in 1941. Matthew Zimmermann) to whom he dedicated his novel Mrs. (1890–1974), a physician, and Ruth Elton Connell. On April 23, 2010, he was awarded a Los Angeles Times Book Prize: the Robert Kirsch Award, for "a living author with a substantial connection to the American West, whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition."Ĭonnell was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the only son of Evan S. In 2009, Connell was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, for lifetime achievement.
His writing covered a variety of genres, although he published most frequently in fiction. Bridge, builds a world with tiny brushstrokes and short, telling vignettes.Įvan Shelby Connell Jr. Connell, who also wrote the twinned novel Mr. in the morning one doesn't wear earrings that dangle." Though her life is increasingly filled with leisure and plenty, she can't shuffle off vague feelings of dissatisfaction, confusion, and futility. She defends her dainty, untouched guest towels from son Douglas, who has the gall to dry his hands on one, and earnestly attempts to control her daughters with pronouncements such as "Now see here, young lady. India Bridge, the title character, has three children and a meticulous workaholic husband. Bridge, an inspired novel set in the years around World War II that testified to the sapping ennui of an unexamined suburban life. The wife of a successful lawyer in 1930s Kansas City, India Bridge, tries to cope with her dissatisfaction with an easy, though empty, life.īefore Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique there was Mrs. Bridge has been hailed by readers and critics alike as one of the greatest novels in American literature.Alternate-cover edition for ISBN 0865470561 / 9780865470569 can be found here In this special fiftieth anniversary edition, we are reminded once again why Mrs.
The novel is comprised of vignettes, images, fragments of conversations, events-all building powerfully toward the completed group portrait of a family, closely knit on the surface but deeply divided by loneliness, boredom, misunderstandings, isolation, sexual longing, and terminal isolation. The raised evening newspaper becomes almost a fire screen to deflect any possible spark of conversation. Bridge’s three children and husband to recede into a remote silence, and she herself drifts further into doubt and confusion. 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. Connell, a consummate storyteller, artfully crafts a portrait using the finest of details in everyday events and confrontations.
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