This limited edition brings together Evan S. Connell's novels Mr Bridge and
Mrs Bridge. The designer Thomas Heatherwick has specially created this beautiful
and innovative interlocking edition, available in a limited print run, which echoes the
books' twin narratives. They can either be read separately, or slotted together. Renowned
designer Thomas Heatherwick is famous for projects as diverse as the Seed Cathedral at the
Shanghai 2010 World Expo, the East Beach Cafe in West Sussex and the flagship Longchamp
store in New York.
A new edition of Evan Connell's Mr Bridge will be published in Penguin Modern
Classics in February 2013 as a companion work to sit alongside Mrs Bridge. The
Penguin Modern Classics edition of Mrs Bridge includes an introduction by Joshua Ferris;
Mr Bridge will be introduced by Lionel Shriver.
The Bridges are an unremarkable and conservative couple who live in Kansas City with
their three children. Mrs Bridge spends her time shopping, going to bridge parties and
bringing up her children to have nice manners; Mr Bridge is an outwardly successful lawyer
who only wants the best for his family. And yet sometimes both experience the vague,
disquieting sensation that all is not well in their comfortable lives. In a series of
comic, telling vignettes, Evan S. Connell illuminates the narrow morality, confusion and
even terror at the heart of lives of plenty. Hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure,
these two novels - told from both perspectives of the marriage - deserve their place
amongst the classics of American twentieth-century fiction.
