A Soldier of the Great War

One of the best novel written about humanity during a vicious conflict and beyond. It deserves more than 5 stars.

I never would have thought I would read a book that has words in the title like "soldier" and "war." But I was urged to give this a look and I knew the writer's other work, which was never short of wonderful. This novel is amazing in scope and power. Helprin is a true craftsman; his words seem to almost sing off the page. And the main character is someone I came to care about deeply, his life and loves, his friends, the tragedies, and even the deep humor. Yes, there is war here and even some exciting sequences which normally I tend to skim, not being a fan of "action." But the way Helprin writes draws you into the story and never lets go.

One of the truly great works of American fiction. I will go so far to say as it is the finest work of fiction I've read written in the last half of the 20th century. In "A Soldier of the Great War" Mark Helprin creates a story encompassing the whole of humanity weaving reality with a world of fantastic wonder. The unbelievable becomes real and what seems simple is only deceptively so and bends into the fascinatingly complex. Helprin's style is enigmatic; his tale told in equal parts masculine bravado and contemplative delicacy. It is nothing short of astonishing. Beginning with the preparation for a visit to his daughter, we follow the elderly Alessandro Giuliani on a seemingly routine bus journey. Things turn and a short journey turns into adventure when the old man comes to the aid of a teenager and he begins sharing his story and the lessons learned over a life rich and eventful. A life of youthful privilege gives way to the horrors of WWI and discoveries of love, loss and destiny. Helprin elevates American fiction to that pantheon we reserve for storytellers the likes of Dickens, Cervantes, Dumas and Hesse. With this book (and to a certain degree "Winter's Tale")- he tightens the gap between great writers of "then" and "now" bringing contemporary fiction a true and rare respectability. All adulation would, of course, mean nothing if this were receiving accolades solely on style and structure and ignoring the "readability" factor. On that front, I can only say this is a book I cannot imagine anyone not falling in love with and that, my friends, is the rarest book of all.

Mark Helprin once offered this advice to an aspiring writer on how best to construct a work, to grab the attention of the reader (and here I can only paraphrase, as I have misplaced the source document): "Treat your story as if a stone thrown into a still pool, coming to rest at the bottom. Then dive in after it." The paraphrase is accurate enough for my purposes, and the message is clear: Know well the end of your journey before you begin it. Little did I know then, when I had meandered across Helprin's advice, that it would be central to my ability to write my thoughts on "A Soldier of the Great War." For about the same length of time as that advice had been imprinted somewhere in my brain, I had also been faced with the daunting prospect of commenting on a thrice-read book, now bulging with scores of page markers as reminders to me of phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and even full pages, all worthy of comment. And, it seemed, the longer I put this task off, the more daunting it became. Fortunately, this block was broken in the recent past, when I needed to give careful thought to a birthday gift for a friend. The gift couldn't appear to be too lavish, except in the riches of its contents. It needed to be something that would be new to this friend (and here I was at some risk), and at the same time something that would not soon - if ever - be forgotten. In the end, I decided to chance it with "A Soldier of the Great War," enclosing a brief note regarding what was in store. And the working through of that note was the curative that I needed for providing my comments on this Helprin work. So I threw my own stone into the pool and dove in after it. "A Soldier of the Great War" flows over with great themes, the long arc of which is the relating of its protagonist's - Alessandro Giuliani's - life story, told in retrospect from Alessandro's memories of that life to a youth who accompanies him on a seemingly short journey from Rome to a near-distant village. And, following his own advice regarding the stone thrown in the pool, Helprin's lyrical, singing prose begins with the story's first paragraph, drawing the reader, too, to dive in, and doesn't let up until the very last page (where it then lingers for a very long while). The overarching themes are classic: love and war; of love discovered, then lost, then found once again; of the blunt impersonality and the lunacy of war. They - and others - are all juxtaposed with typical Helprinian brilliance. There are maniacally funny set-pieces, interwoven so seamlessly into the narrative that one is not aware at first of Helprin's skill with the set-piece device as one is drawn in. (These include an excursion to the plains of Eastern Hungary that is one of the most remarkable of such pieces ever written.) There are passages of heartrending grief quite beyond one's ability to deal with them. And the story teems with characters both bigger than life and smaller and meaner than dirt. But, at its

This is a classic bildungsroman - that's a German term for a novel which portrays the development of an individual character, as he or she seeks to discover meaning in life or a place in life, often in the face of an inflexible social system.But this dry description does no justice whatsoever to this amazing novel of love, war and dwarves who hate typewriters.In recounting the life story of Alessandro Giuliani through the tragedy of the First World War and beyond, Mark Helprin has created a masterpiece of literature, unique, immensely rich and utterly unputdownable.As Alessandro journeys through the war, from Rome, to Sicily, to the Alps and deep into the Austrian Empire, he gradually discovers three things: first, it's impossible to tell what the purpose of war is. Second, Alessandro himself is not going to die, which makes the loss of those he loves even harder to bear. Third, hope is not the opposite of despair, rather it's what we make of despair in order to live our lives.This is a cross between Catch-22, Captian Corelli's Mandolin and Baron Von Munchausen, and in many respects is better than them all. Alessandro finds himself in so many amazing (and often unbelievable) brushes with death that this reader lost count and simply marvelled that each episode surpasses its predecessor.Yes, like any great work the book has its flaws. I think it would have benefitted from a sterner editor as it is probably a hundred pages too long. The difficulty of course would be in deciding which hundred pages to cut. Having said that, I gave a copy to my father, who is a stern critic of war novels. He was utterly gripped.It is long, though. Don't expect to be able to put it down, either. This is a book you have to make space in your life for. But you won't regret it.

If you want to know why the recent list of the 100 greatest 20th century novels is such a farce, then read this book. Mark Helpin has more talent in his pinky than most of the writers who made that list. This book is stunningly awesome.I am fascinated by turn-of-the-century Europe and the Great War, and Mark Helprin managed to lock into my mind and take me back to that period. Unlike others whose only critique was the slow build-up, I couldn't get enough of the long journey that Alessandro and Nicolo embarked upon. Alessandro was in the Great War and I hung on his every word and memory.This book is powerful and moving. Helprin, through Alessandro, pleads with us to remember all of the soldiers who lie under the white crosses. Their lives were meaninglessly thrown away, but we have the power to restore meaning just by remembering them. The ending of this book is so perfect that I wanted to cry but I was too awestruck by the beauty and the power and the meaning of the book as a whole.