Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Winter's Tale
Book Review: A Tale For New Yorkers and Beyond
Summary: 4 Stars
Mark Helprin's "Winter's Tale" is a staggering achievement that celebrates love, language, eternity, rebirth, the golden age and the magical & mystical City that is New York.
Do you have to be a New Yorker to enjoy this tale to its' fullest - no - but those who are will have the advantage of enjoying the images both real and imaginary that describe this great City through the last century and into the new Millenium.
The hero of the tale, Peter Lake, starts out in this epic journey as a mere thief in the New York City of the early 1900's. It is when he meets his eternal love, Beverly Penn, that he realizes what his life is all about. Her premature demise from illness is not enough to stop their love and Peter's return for the last third of this novel - in the year 1999 just before the Millenium - defies time and justifies for him the promise of bringing about the Golden Age and reclaiming his eternal love.
Helprin is a master of language and produces images so vivid and magical you will feel like you are reading someone's dream. My only criticism is that the novel is a bit too long at nearly 750 pages and could have been equally magical at about 100 pages less. There are bits of incohesivness and characters introduced who really do not drive the plot to any extent. When Peter Lake is not the focus of the story you will be longing for his return. But if anything is to be taken away from this marvelous novel it is the premise that wishes and dreams can come true in the face of any adversity.
Book Review: A book I'll never forget
Summary: 5 Stars
I first read this novel about 30 years ago. The beauty of the prose and scope of imagination will be forever etched in my memory. In addition it was a great story. This made Helprin one of my favorite contemporary authors. And Soldier of the Great War was just as good, if not better.Book Review: A magical look at a great city
Summary: 5 Stars
Helprin is one of my favorite authors; he is sort of America's answer to Garcia-Marquez in that he writes "magical realism" novels. Books which seem to be firmly set in reality, but sometimes skitter off into surrealism or fantasy.
This book for example, is the story of a mechanically gifted burglar, Peter Lake, who meets and falls in love with Beverly Penn, a young woman in the process of dying from tuberculosis, while attempting to burgle her house. Did I mention that Lake was being intensely pursued by Pearly Soames and his "Short-Tails" gang from the Five Points in NYC? Or that Lake lives in the crawl space above the star-studded ceiling of Grand Central Station, where he has arranged a sort of apartment? Well, you get the idea.
Helprin's vision of NYC, at both the beginning and end of the 20th century is very much a character in this book. The book is full of whimsey, passion and depth. The writing is lyrical. In short this is an amazing way to lose oneself for hours.
Book Review: A truly wonderful novel
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been an enormous fan of Mark Helprin ever since I first picked up A Soldier of the Great War and got immediately sucked in. This was the third of Helprin's novels that I read, and I remember when I was reading both loving it, and then being somewhat baffled and let down by the crazed ending. However, I can safely that no novel has ever stuck with me the way Winter's Tale has. I can still vividly recall scenes from the book, scenes that are so perfect and beautiful that you wont want to leave the world that Helprin describes. If you love Helprin, if you love New York, or if you love reading, then this book is for you.Book Review: Amazing...
Summary: 5 Stars
Okay, I don't know how I missed this for 25 years. What would I want to know before I purchased this book...they say to be specific. I would have wanted to know that this is IMPORTANT, I should have read it years ago! So...magical, realist, basic, impossible, a portrait of a region and of a time. I cannot imagine how an author in 1983 could have imagined and created this world.
This is a tale, literally, a story that shapes reality, that shapes our imagination, and that glorifies (?), maybe illustrates, find-the-right-word, a region of America that is part of our collective unconscious, but that we do not know. The City, NYC, as imagined, is the central character of this novel, she acts upon the other characters, she transcends time, she reaches out. Her reach moves northward, and illustrates the Hudson Valley. Her reach transforms into magic through the Cloud Wall, her reach moves through time. The author's intent may have been to encapsulate the energy of the millenium, to focus the energy of our culture and to stretch our credulity. He succeeded. READ IT.