Bridge

Author Lauren Beukes
Narrator Lisa Cordileone
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Run Time 13 hours and 26 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Family life fiction, Fantasy, Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, Narrative theme: Sense of place, Science fiction, Thriller / suspense fiction.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

The mind-bending masterpiece from the multi-award-winning author of Apple TV's smash hit literary adaptation SHINING GIRLS, starring Elizabeth Moss.

In infinite parallel universes, there's a version of you who already has everything you've ever wanted. But 24 year old drop-out Bridge is paralysed, by all the other lives she could have lived, the choices she could have made, and now, whoever she's supposed to be in the wake of her mother's premature death.

They've always had a complicated relationship. Jo was the teenage runaway turned maverick neuroscientist who threw everything away chasing after an impossibility - a mysterious artefact - the dreamworm - that allows you to switch between realities. And now she's dead and any chance of reconciliation with her.

But is Jo really gone... or only in this universe? When Bridge and her best friend Dom stumble on the dreamworm, that does indeed open the doors to other worlds, otherselves, she becomes convinced her mom is lost out there. But the dreamworm is more dangerous than she can imagine, and she's not the only one hunting across time and space.

Page-turning and ambitious, BRIDGE is a dazzlingly inventive speculative thriller with an unforgettable cast of characters, and the work of a novelist at the height of her powers.

For fans of RUSSIAN DOLL, STRANGER THINGS, EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE, from Sunday Times bestseller and multi-award winning writer Lauren Beukes.

PRAISE FOR LAUREN BEUKES:
'A smartly written thriller that opens with a satisfying bang . . . splendid' STEPHEN KING

'Powerful and intelligent' GUARDIAN

'A major, major talent' GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

© Lauren Beukes 2023 (P) Penguin Audio 2023

Critics Review

An addictive, fascinating and compelling page-turner. With an original take on the many worlds theory.

Guardian

A high-concept page-turner

The Herald

Beukes puts cerebral propositions into breakneck thrillers

The Spectator

You can tell Beukes is having an absolute blast putting words on the page. Her fun is evident in the big, bloody action sequences; in the squirmy, almost retro grotesqueness of the dreamworm.

The New York Times

Bridge is a step into the offbeat, an imaginative stew of ingredients: neuroscience and parasitology, musical theory and Haitian Voudou.

Elle

Complex, challenging, gripping and thought-provoking. A morally thorny tale without clear-cut heroes or villains. Beukes does a skilful job of balancing desperate but very relatable hope.

SFX

A blend of sci-fi and thriller . . . I can highly recommend

Alison Flood, New Scientist

Lauren Beukes’ multiverse is thrilling-balancing madness, horror, and a big, bleeding, beating heart that reminds us that we are all connected in the end

Grady Hendrix

I absolutely loved it. This fantastic high-wire act of a novel, accelerating to a heart-stopping climax, is at once a cosmic narrative on a grand scale and a deeply intimate human story. Bravo!

Catriona Ward, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Last House on Needless Street

Bridge spiders out into alternate universes, alternate selves, yet manages to be very much about us and our fractured now. It’s a humane, thought-provoking puzzle box, and a wildly entertaining novel

Paul Tremblay, bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World and The Pallbearers Club

Vast in scope and heart, Bridge is both a thrilling exploration of the known universe and an intimate portrayal of a daughter’s yearning for her mother. Lauren Beukes has crafted a suspenseful, deeply immersive odyssey that will make you consider the alternate possibilities inside us all. A perfect summer read.

Katie Gutierrez, author of More Than You'll Ever Know

Lauren Beukes takes a story filled with psychedelic drugs, parallel worlds, and neuroscience and makes it also about a complex mother-daughter relationship, full of darkness, light, and longing. This is fun and insane and very moving

Mariana Enriquez, author of Our Share of Night

What if our dreams are twisted-up memories? What if the Mandela Effect isn’t an effect at all? Somewhere between The Lathe of Heaven and Everything Everywhere All at Once is Lauren Beukes’ Bridge: it’s not just reality that’s multifold, it’s identity. Bridge challenges our sense of reality, chips away at our conception of the self, and shoves us down a slide of our own paranoia. But, it’s Lauren Beukes-this is what she does, isn’t it?

Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians

Thrilling, complex, and pulse-pounding. Beukes handles the balance between action and emotion brilliantly, this is speculative fiction of the highest calibre

Big Issue

Praise for Lauren Beukes

A stand-out chase thriller. How can you not fall in love with this book?

Stephen King

A major, major talent

George RR Martin

Very, very good. It feels effortless. Utterly accomplished

William Gibson

A powerful thriller – imaginative, disturbing, tense, compelling reading

The Times

Dark, relentless, time-twisting, page-turning … it shines

Matt Haig

Powerful and intelligent

Guardian

A ripping tale that neither shies away from big questions nor interesting answers

New Scientist

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