THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY (Robert James Waller) - October 22/12

See, CS Richardson, this is how you do a book with poetic passages. Waller offers up a couple of extraordinarily vivid characters and an inherently compelling premise, and it becomes more and more difficult not to become wrapped up in this admittedly simple story. It got to the point where I was actually quite upset when I learned that Robert and Francesca were never reunited, and there were a few passages towards the end where I had to choke back tears (which was problematic, to say the least, since I was on a crowded subway car at the time). And yeah, Waller occasionally goes overboard with the poetic stuff, but still, it's otherwise such an engrossing book that I can overlook that. ***1/2 out of ****