The Bridge of Heaven

READERS of this novel, which has a prefatory poem by John Masefield, will be well advised to look first at the three pages of chronology winch end the book, “Principal Events in China, 1879-1912,” and then to forget history and to read for the story. Like the crudely prepared bombs of the early Chinese revolutionaries, some of the prepared climaxes in this book do not come off. But others do, surprisingly. In the somewhat unreal history of Ta Tung — born to a fisherman, adopted by a miserly foster father, educated by self-help, ragamuffin revolutionary, widower by default-the reader can see Chinese nationalism tentatively emerging. Some of the many people, like Lotus Fragrance, Ta Tung’s loving and long-neglected wife, are appealingly quaint. Others, like his foster brother, Shiao Ming, are frankly incredible. But all of them suggest stylized figures on an endless and unconventional Chinese screen. The book is naïve and, in its artless, Oriental way, charming.