Suspension Bridge, The

The Suspension Bridge
by Anna Dowdall
Published by Radiant Press
Review by Brandon Fick
$25.00 ISBN 9781998926121

Anna Dowdall’s mysterious, allegorical novel The Suspension Bridge has the subtitle, “A Sister Harriet Mystery,” but it could just as easily be subtitled “A 1962-1963 Mystery,” considering the early 1960s atmosphere and tensions percolating in every chapter. There are many supporting characters in the novel, but it revolves around Sister Harriet, a nun in her first year of teaching at swanky Saint Reginald’s Academy, a Catholic boarding school for girls in the fictional city of Bothonville, located in southern Ontario. Once three popular senior girls at Saint Reginald’s go missing, unease and suspicion ripple through the school and wider community, and Sister Harriet, in the midst of her own identity crisis, is both wittingly and unwittingly caught up in the mystery. Looming over everything is the under-construction suspension bridge, expected to “confer untold benefits on Bothonville” and create a world that “was practically a new dispensation,” yet the bridge is also a nexus of sinister and supernatural activity, along with regular old urban conflict.

While this has elements of a fairy tale, and sardonic humour of the wry grin rather than laugh-out-loud variety, where The Suspension Bridge shines is in its portrait of Sister Harriet. The first hundred pages are slower as Dowdall builds relationships and mood, but once the first girl goes missing, the narrative kicks into drive, with Sister Harriet as the mostly innocent, still resourceful driver. She does in fact drive from Saint Reginald’s to meetings of the Bridge Design Committee, a “pack of humanity” that “yattered with civic bonhomie.” She also reflects on her own difficult childhood in Bothonville that eventually led to a life within the Church. In one memorable early scene, Sister Harriet climbs to the top of the suspension bridge and is swept up in its spell: “She stood in a world of delicate pink-tinted mist, that moved continually. When it thinned, graciously soaring trusses became visible, leading her forward, and, when it thickened, she felt like one of those fresco cherubs bobbing in the candy floss of paradise.” The spells of two men, Brother Cyprian, a contact from another religious institution with “gold-flecked eyes” that “were a very dark blue,” and Marin Montserrat, a lay teacher at Saint Reginald’s with “wavy black hair, lively dark eyes, elegant features and languid gestures,” also present internal challenges for Sister Harriet. Not only does she question her faith, she questions the type of woman she could have been, and maybe still could.

Dowdall recreates 1962 and 1963 with care, but not rose-tinted glasses. This is the era of Camelot, of big dreams and aspirations, cool, buttoned-up reserve masking undercurrents of change, volatility, and seediness. For the most part, as it did in reality at this time, cool, buttoned-up reserve reigns, but the dam, so to speak, will not hold forever. As the novel goes along, circumstances force Sister Harriet to ditch her nun’s habit for a more chic attire and style: woolen turtlenecks, corduroy pants, a pompom beret, a pea jacket, at one point, even styling her hair “with Bardot bangs and the rest tucked into a fabric band.” Further freedom for women that would be realized about a decade later is hinted at, along with more permissive, though not necessarily safer, relations between the sexes. At times there is an air of unreality, a deliberate off-kilter nature to the story – as in a fairy tale, a couple of characters live in a shack deep in the woods – but Dowdall also raises concerns relevant to today. The high expectations and restrictions placed on young women. Bureaucratic wrangling. The belief that infrastructure projects will solve all economic and social ills. Marginalized communities and workers not seeing the benefits of “progress.” For readers looking to brush up on their vocabulary, Dowdall also offers a plethora of dictionary-inducing words: “amanuensis,” “swots,” “assignation.”

The suspension bridge within The Suspension Bridge can be seen as a symbol of many things: the future, divine aspirations, sexual freedom, female agency, greed, and perhaps a world more honest about its faults. Ultimately though, a bridge is only as strong as its people, and the people of Bothonville are flawed. In that sense, reading The Suspension Bridge is like looking through a glass darkly.

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