Gavin Francis begins his new book with “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”, his favourite story as a little boy growing up in Scotland. In this Norwegian folk tale, three goats want to cross a bridge to reach a field of sweet grass, but a troll commands the span, threatening to eat the first and smallest goat. Goat One persuades the troll to wait for Goat Two, a bigger and tastier meal; eventually Goat Three, Big Goat, throws the troll off the bridge so that peace and order are restored.
“The bridge in the story is a barrier, but it is also a kind of test,” Francis writes. In the end, “the bridge is restored to its glorious function: connection rather than division.” Yet in the chapters that follow, he questions whether the function and meaning of bridges can ever be expressed so simply and optimistically.