In the quiet backwaters of Iowa, Francesca Johnson - an Italian girl turned American farmer's wife - and Robert Kincaid - a nomadic photographer, one of the 'last cowboys', a 'leopardlike creature who rode in on the tail of a comet' - play out a poignant love story under the hot August sun of 1965.

Kincaid arrives on Francesca's doorstep looking to photograph the covered bridges of Madison county - on commission from National Geographic magazine. From the instant they meet, Francesca is drawn to him and he to her. Swept along by their feelings, the pair quickly become lovers, but the return of Francesca's husband at the end of the week forces the affair to a close.

With a simple, direct manner, writer Robert James Waller evokes aching passionate love between two people clearly meant for each other, but because of circumstances unable to be together. He writes with the aim of telling this story, supposedly based on truth, to the world. It's a tale - he argues - which, in 'a world where personal commitment in all its forms seems to be shattering and love has become a matter of convenience' is definitely 'worth the telling'. He appears to have been quite carried away by this story of true love. So his prose - written in a generally straightforward manner - occasionally jars with claims of 'the old ways' (the basic attraction between a man and a woman) and poetic descriptions of Robert Kincaid as living 'in strange, haunted places, far back along the stems of Darwin's logic'.

But despite his somewhat awkward storytelling - perhaps meant to evoke Robert Kincaid's own awkward, straightforward manner - he recreates with great skill the love these two people had, and their pain at not being able to be together. This is brought to a terrible climax as Francesca watches Kincaid drive away from her for the very last time. He seems convinced that Francesca and Robert's story is proof that true, passionate, all-consuming love between two humans can and does exist - even in today's world.

The Bridges of Madison County is also very much his tribute to Robert Kincaid. He describes a man from a 'dying breed' of people who have no place in the modern world of 'rules and regulations and laws and social conventions'. And it is a tribute to the 'old world' Kincaid claims he belongs to - in which men could do things 'no machine could do. We run fast, are strong and quick, aggressive and tough'. But this begs the question as to whether the love between Francesca and Robert - which the writer appears to be trying to bring to a changed world - can really happen without a man such as Kincaid to make it.

Robert James Waller's one let-down is that he can't write good speech. Almost everything his characters say is stilted and unnatural, too much like the prose he otherwise writes in, and hard to imagine anyone saying easily. Often one character will expound on a vital theme which advances the storyline for several paragraphs, giving the impression that the writer is trying to move the story along in the shortest possible time. But overall his story is powerful. Whether or not Francesca's and Robert Kincaid's love can exist in this 'new world', it is worth knowing of, and holding on to. And hoping that, maybe one day, it might come to you.

(c) Ellen Andersen 2009

reviewed 9 April 2009 / London

NOTES - The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller (b 1939); first published in 1992. In print and available from eg Waterstone. A current edition is ISBN - 9780099421344, publisher - Arrow Books Ltd, paperback, 182 pages, date of publication - 13 September 1993.

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