“Five Bridges”
by Colm Tóibín
from the March 10, 2025 issue of The New Yorker
A new story from Colm Tóibín is always worth paying attention to, and this one seems especially resonant given current events.. Tóibín often writes about displacement and belonging, and I think we can expect more of that here — though with a twist. From his interview with Deborah Treisman I see that here we have an undocumented Irish man who overstayed his visa years ago and, given things going on, decides it’s time to go back to Ireland. I haven’t read this one yet, but I’m curious to see how Tóibín handles this premise. This is how the story begins:
She promised that the climbing would be easy.
“Even for you,” she said.
“How long?”
“An hour. Or maybe two hours. Or maybe three.”
“Give or take?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Paul had told her two weeks earlier, on their last outing to Point Reyes Station, that he was leaving, packing up. She would be able to come to Ireland to visit him, he said now, and they should start making plans for that.
I’ve always admired Tóibín’s restraint—let’s see how that plays out in this new story. Please feel free to leave your thoughts below!
This is a story with such a reserve of feeling and kindness and humanism that I was very moved and saddened.
The seeming simplicity of the style is possibly even more effortful than more overly stylistic riding. The touch of a controlled master may look easy, but this is so lovely and affecting
This seems rather simple and I have a feeling that is possibly because he is such a good writer that it seems effortless. This was very moving and describing someone leaving a place they never thought they would spend so much time in and having last moments with someone they love is described here with great feeling.
We climb a mountain to see five bridges but sometimes we see less. We pay for our youthful mistakes but we can still harvest something valuable, albeit far from ideal, from those mistakes.
The impending heartbreak keeps this story moving.
It is good to read stories about individuals caught in awkward, difficult situations. A reader possibly immediately remembers an awkward situation of their own that they might not have handled well so they immediately have empathy for the main character.
And it can be therapeutic in warning one off engaging in questionable behaviors or decisions that can lead to one or another kinds of big or small failures. Even if it could be argued by others that it’s not really one’s fault.
The reader can see they are not the only one and looks for how closely the writer can define how incredibly uncomfortable one can be in such a situation.
It doesn’t matter that the main character was still living on the edge, overstaying their visa and being able to survive IRS scrutiny for 8 years. One of the best parts of this story is all the details of it, swirling around in one’s head. And all the thoughts and feelings swirling in the heads of those one has had a relationship by chance that leads to another unexpected relationship.
To be able to truthfully summon up a consise picture of the thing is difficult, but when well done, it is one of the best and most defining aspects of an excellent short story.
Anything well defined in how it is written becomes easier to confront if very closely observed. And ultimately it’s always more beneficial to not be reading about easy accomplishments and be more willing to look at difficult failures.
There are some slight bits of moxy and dead-pan humor that make the situation seem all the more real and give the story energy.
My favorite sentence is when one of the characters says, “When the pressures on, I have the power.”
One could say that it may not always seem like it or one doesn’t think about it much, but “the pressures on” or starts from the moment one is born. Most people don’t think about whether it all worked out as they had hoped or not thought much about until they reach certain junctures in their life where one brought to account.
This is about a particular immigrant experience but even first being born into the world can seem like an immigrant experience. While everything may well end all okay, one wonders early on whether they will be able to keep from making too many big mistakes and actually arrive at where they hoped to be instead of end up at wherever they never wanted to go.