Of soul-mates and love. Review on Bridge Across Forever, The - Richard Bach

This is not a book for everyone. If you're already a Complete Man, a la Raymonds, you can skip it. Rest of us, who are just struggling to find and to understand love, this book may just be what we should have read long ago.

Bridge Across Forever, is a partly autobiographical story of Richard's search for his soul-mate. It's not a story of a perfect man meeting a perfect woman, and they living happily ever after. It's the story of a man, who has much to learn about love, including the very concept of soul-mate.

The story is quite simple, and predictable. Richard is frantically searching for the one person who's made for him, not knowing where to find her. He sees shades of her in various women he meets. And he goes through his life with his half-baked idea of love, and of personal freedom.

Then along the way, he finds a dear friend, with whom he shares a platonic relationship. Leslie, a woman he admires, adores; a woman who gradually crystallizes his idea of soul-mate into a concrete reality.

Sometimes the very thing that you're looking for is the one thing you can't see. (from Save the Best for Last).

What happens when the relationship changes from Platonic to romantic? How does highly individualistic Richard cope with the demands of a romantic relationship? This is the crux of The Bridge Across Forever. The journey isn't smooth at all. No real love story is...

So what's new? I really can't answer that. What I know is: the first time that I read it, it made me cry. It made me laugh. It made me introspect. It made me question my own assumptions about love, about soul-mate. It made me want to meet Richard and Leslie once, and tell them how much it meant to me.

And I'm not alone. The story of Richard and Leslie is so enchanting, that many felt betrayed, when they divorced after a long marriage. Not every author can do that to adults, who know that what they're reading is stylized reality at best. Apparently, something in the Bridge stuck a chord. What? Learn for yourself. It's the one modern day love story, that can mesmerize you.

In Richard's own words:

We think sometimes, there's not a dragon left. Not one brave knight, not a single princes gliding through secret forests, enchanting deer and butterflies with her smile.

This is a story about a knight, who was dying, and the princess who saved his life. It's a story about beauty and beasts and spells and fortresses, about death-powers that seem and life-powers that are. It's a tale of the adventure that mattered most. I think, in any age.