Gavin Francis’s meditative travelogue takes in history as well as geography, exploring how bridges can also be barriers
Gavin Francis begins his new book with “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”, his favourite story as a little boy growing up in Scotland. In this Norwegian folk tale, three goats want to cross a bridge to reach a field of sweet grass, but a troll commands the span, threatening to eat the first and smallest goat. Goat One persuades the troll to wait for Goat Two, a bigger and tastier meal; eventually Goat Three, Big Goat, throws the troll off the bridge so that peace and order are restored.
The ancient stone arch AnJi Bridge in Xiaohe, China is a “Bridge of Peace” because, to Francis’s eyes, it remains a symbol of the kind of calm political consolidation that such structures can achieve. The Brooklyn Bridge is a “Bridge of Poetry” for its association with Hart Crane, Joseph Stella and other artists who have hymned its steel and stone. And so on. The danger in this conceit is that it covers both too much and too little ground.
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