“Ms. de Kerangal’s writing is always exuberant (and boisterously translated by Jessica Moore) … This delightful book’s unabashed idealism, combined with those playfully literary proper names, marks it as a kind of aspirational fairy tale. … Ms. de Kerangal gives us a Tocquevillian picture of America from its most flattering angle: An enterprising, melting-pot democracy driven by dreams of progress and happy to get its hands dirty…”
– Wall Street Journal

“A modern saga chronicling the construction of a colossal bridge. … there is … lyricism and beauty to be found through each character’s obsessive outlook on the land and the bridge. Moore stays true to de Kerangal’s unique prose, which flows from the mythic to the mundane. Her translation is clear and unadorned. The story told through its varied cast of characters, alternating from the grandiose to the intimate, is one that will stay with readers long after the book is closed and the bridge is built.”
– Publishers’ Weekly

“The whole narrative unfolds in a dreamlike manner, and Moore’s translation is elegant and sensitively attuned to the author’s wordplay and neologisms.”
– Kirkus Reviews

“The book’s themes are mythic; its prose, symphonic. The novel concerns humankind’s hunger for glory, and our drive to ‘master space,’ a desire we will go to any length to fulfil. In the novel, this plays out through the building of a ‘superstar’ bridge, ‘a technical epic,’ one that is painted vermilion, a brilliant shade of red. The eventual job of the bridge is to bring two landscapes together, but, during the building it comes to resemble, with its miles of veinlike red cable, a living organism, a kind of monster powered by the energy of a hot and nervous people.”
– Vancouver Sun

“…Ambitious prose that ebbs and flows in long, graceful sentences interspersed with shorter, punchier ones. … de Kerangal refrains from taking a black or white stance concerning the issue of globalization, but instead uses the narrative to invite the reader to consider the complex environmental, social, and economical factors at play. … a relevant novel that leaves the reader with few concrete answers, but artfully poses a number of questions worthy of attention.”
– Bull Calf

“A strikingly original contemporary myth and a thrilling investigation of post-modernity. The story is simple, absorbingly technical, full of tactile details and well-grounded practicalities. The novel has a strong picaresque quality as well as a masterly epic Western dimension. It is a quest for something unnamed, something unknown, symbolically embodied by the bridge, with powerful impetus and thrust, both narrative and verbal, a constant sense of mobility – and at the same time stagnation. … The picture of the world that de Kerangal conjures – magnificently, breathlessly, intoxicatingly – is a picture of dire meaninglessness and occasionally deep, troubling horror. It is also a picture too familiar to dismiss as fiction. … Maylis de Kerangal is one of the most beautiful and dynamic writers that France has produced in a very long time. … Birth of a Bridge is her first novel to be translated into English – powerfully and elegiacally by Jessica Moore – and there is no doubt that it will mark a change in perception, in appreciation, in humanity, in readers and writers alike.”
– Bookanista

“[An] audacious narrative … For all the satiric symbolism and the many cultural references and sideshows, this pragmatic, defiant story is, almost surprisingly, also about building a bridge. … sharp, original, funny and shocking, merciless in its multiple ironies. J.G. Ballard would have applauded it; Don DeLillo would smile wryly. Her prose is snappy, emphatic and muscular, and her use of language, as with names, is free-wheeling. Jessica Moore, the book’s translator, provides a three-page note on the linguistic challenges and unusual word choices. … The story, or rather the project, is the bridge; it is the centre. The humans are minor players. … Although this novel is blunt and plainspeaking, there are moments of beauty … an original, laconic, astute and relentlessly topical morality tale that scores several direct hits.”
– Irish Times

“The action in this novel (de Kerangal’s first to be translated into English) is fast-paced with long sentences that sparkle and flow like that under the sun; just as the characters in the story occasionally mingle, so do references to nature, artifice, and culture. … the reader never feels bogged down because of the passion and intelligence she displays in her subject, as well as her inventive use of language. In addition, Moore’s translation manages the impressive balancing act of maintaining the originality of Kerangal’s French prose while making it accessible for non-French readers. Overall, unlike the characters that constantly move from place to place, Birth of a Bridge will stay with readers long after they finish it.”
– Three Percent