Bridge to Bat City

Bridge to Bat City

by Ernest Cline

Blurb:

After losing her mother, thirteen-year-old Opal B. Flats moves in with her uncle Roscoe on the family farm. There, she bonds with Uncle Roscoe over music and befriends a group of orphaned, music-loving bats. But just as the farm is starting to feel like home, the bats’ cave is destroyed by a big mining company with its sights set on the farmland next.

If Opal and the bats can fit in anywhere, it’s the nearby city of Austin, home to their favorite music and a host of wonderfully eccentric characters. But with people afraid of the bats and determined to get rid of them, it’ll take a whole lot of courage to prove that this is where the bats—and Opal—belong.

My Reaction:
Donald and I read this one together for the 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back podcast.  

This is one mystifying novel.  I mean, just who was it written for?  It's marketed for "middle grade" readers, i.e. kids aged 8-12, and for the most part, it feels like it's written at that level of complexity—though to be honest, I'm not sure the language has been simplified all that much in comparison with RPO and the author's other novels.  

But on the other hand, so much of the novel is just an excuse to shoe-horn in as many 80s(-ish)-era Austin, Texas "notables" as possible. (In many cases, these people seem to be merely Austin-adjacent.)  Essentially, the subject matter is just nothing that a typical modern child would ever care about.  Heck, I'm in my mid-40s, and I didn't recognize probably half of these so-called celebrities.  

Even if these people (mostly musicians and bands) making cameo appearances had been someone a 9-year-old reading in 2024 would immediately be able to identify, so what?  Reading vague, repetitive descriptions of people (and melomaniac bats!) listening—excuse me, grooving—to music is just not very engaging or entertaining.  

Music is meant to be listened to, darn it!  It would take a more talented writer than this to make it enjoyable to read about a single concert attendance, never mind the numerous gigs presented back to back in this book.  (What in the world was the author thinking?!)

There are other problems with this book I could go into, but why bother?  It's not an entertaining read for an adult, and I can't imagine many of the intended audience will love it, either.  I guess it was just a desperate attempt to make some money based on the author's name recognition.