Bridge

Winner of the 2015 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction

Set in modern-day San Francisco, this obsessive work of fiction probes the stormy life of Alice, a passionate and whip-smart young woman who works at a law firm. Alice faces despair and occasional rapture as she struggles with simultaneously real and hallucinated relationships, including a tumultuous romance with her co-worker David, and an escalating war with her supervisor Fran. In lyrical prose, Bridge exposes a raw, brilliant, and furious mind as it treads the jagged terrain of mental illness, murder, and suicide—to be or not to be.

Praise for Bridge

“Ever wonder what that quiet girl in the office is thinking?...” —Eleanor Wilner, Ploughshares

“Thomas’s combination of sheer lyricism and incisive edginess…” —Tony Hoagland

“Robert Thomas has done the nearly impossible in this age…” —Laura Kasischke

“A novel that is not merely enjoyable, or absorbing, but a revelation…” —Robin Black

“What happens in the story is minimal, but how it happens is striking…” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Crisp, concise, emotionally explosive riffs…” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Alice—a lonely, at times suicidal woman—narrates the minutiae of her life with insight and wit…” —Kirkus Review

“An engaging, meandering exploration of the mind of the novel’s protagonist…” —Bookslut