Bridge to Terabithia

I don't know if a teen reading this without knowing the plot would have felt the same emotional damage I did when I first saw the film. Back in the days I felt very close to these kids and their games, so I was hit with a totally unexpected violence by THE plot twist (which I won't spoil), which left me tearing of despair. This time I was prepared.

What I was NOT prepared for was the way the authoress treats you, an hypothetically young reader, the same way the characters treat the young protagonist of the book, Jess. At some point his friend Leslie starts talking about Narnia and other books. Nothing is explained: these books are just mentioned and somehow "implied", and initially I was like "well, what if the reader never read or heard of Narnia?". But then Leslie gives him those books as presents. And later on it is said that the only book in Jess's house was the bible. That's when it hit me: that feeling of "wtf is Narnia" that the reader probably feels is the same feeling experienced by the character. That's a writing masterclass if I ever saw one.

There's also a very refined writing of the adult characters. They almost all are initially portrayed as ignorant, deficient, somehow evil. And then slowly the experience of this new girl Leslie gives them a chance to show a side of them that the protagonist doesn't know. They are, in fact, definitely deficient, but they bear their own deep traumas and conflicts and they are broken to a level that the children can't really fathom. The distance between Jess and his father is something that probably was more typical of the seventies, but it still hits as something definitely real, painful and mysterious.

There's some minor flaw, I believe. Some ellipses are way too long and way too quickly injected in the story. The final approaching between Jess and his father is maybe a bit too simple and sudden? It was the obvious ending and I feel like it missed some quality. Some characters are introduced but quickly forgotten. I was expecting the bully Janice to appear in the ending as well, as she does in the film. The fact that her conflict with the protagonist is somehow resolved at the half of the plot and never resurfaces significantly doesn't work that well.

Still gave it four stars on five and recommend it to whoever is looking for a short bildungsroman from a few decades ago. Or for some emotional trauma.