While cleaning up my inbox at formspring.com last night, one simple question made me decide to make this blog post. The question was: "What's the most challenging love story that you have ever read in books?" I immediately answered it with the title of a novel I had read a year ago. Now, if you haven't read THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY by Robert James Waller, it's not yet too late. Go grab it! And if you have, I know you'll mind reading what I think about one of the few un-put-downables books ever.

The book is entirely fictional but on its introduction, there is a subplot that makes it appear real. The introduction follows the track of the two full-grown children of the main female character who found their mother's diary that contained a revelation that shook their world. The woman who is of Italian descent, got married to an American guy and settled in a small town in Iowa. This woman had lived all her life with an unexplanable feeling of incompleteness even if there wasn't wrong with her children or with her husband. However, there came a time when her soul was lifted, her eyes sparkled with excitement, and her hopes opened for an all new episode when she met a National Geographic photographer from Washington who went to Madison County to make photographic essays about its lovely bridges. And this meeting, for both of them, has been their most fundamental serendipity. It remained a secret written in a diary. It was never told until her death.

While the woman's family was away and she's temporarily all alone, he came to her not by accident but by fate. He was asking for directions to get to specific bridges. He found her. He told her his years of travels. She rose to claim a yearning of the world she has felt abandoned her. Her hopes were renewed in full colors. She saw in him the bridge which leads to the perfection she sought her entire life. They both shared love that was unconditionally requited in all aspects- emotions, sex, care, dreams and promises. Resulting to a love that reawakened its potentials in a very powerful way. How can a four-day love affair go beyond its eternal limits? She had his family. But she could have him. He promised her a life of witnessing how her daydreams turn to reality. The ending? It will leave you with an ever-changing sense of satisfaction. A question you would forcibly ask yourself everyday.

While reading this masterpiece, I noticed that the story suppressed my thoughts over the details and the consequences of the love affair. It just let me feel it. The magic of the plot lets readers put down the book temporarily, look up and think deeply about how the world exists. It releases readers to overcome questions on morality. It makes you cover your mouth with one hand while the other pushes the book to yout chest then you continue reading onwards. The conflict with a personal sentimentality to the book, to the characters and to their actions almost completely eliminates reflective thinking and just supercedes emotion all by itself for the very pleasure of indulging in it. Human nature, indeed. The problem why the four-day love affair can or cannot last a lifetime isn't a major issue anymore once the novel is pulls its finale punches at the end. You will answer your own dispute.

I can feel as well that the author crafted the novel that way so that people themselves will be stuck with its ever-universal theme. In this modern world where love seems defeats explanations and human existence is always redefined, people have been delighted with the nourishment of fantansies through romance-themed novels, death-defying movie love stories, and emotions behind every line of a lovesong. Even if it less practical to fantansize, it opens the door for human imaginations to break the barriers of what can never be done and what is impossible to happen. Since we cannot sometimes control the way our lives are written, we look up to the idea of fate and destiny. That is why we love the feeling that we are virtually challenging our own emotions. We are blindly spoon-feeding ourselves in the time we least expect doing it.

For me, the thing that extends novels like The Bridges of Madison County to their resonation is the presentation of a large painting where people can see the beauty of preference. We are happiest when we make our own choices, not when all other individuals decide for us. Norms, customs and social approval are temporarily set aside in this paradigm. The only thing left is faith while letting destiny bring even people from different dimensions to somewhere they can be together.#