Refiner's Fire

I started life reading all of the works of William Faulkner -- The best American writer of the 20th Century. Richard Powers is obviously a genius and a great writer. Don Dillio, John Irving, and especially Wallace Stegner are all great writers. But Mark Helprin is a true genius with language. After reading four of Mark Helprin's books, he comes closest to the magic writing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, except I end up caring a gread deal more about his characters. "Winter's Tale" is remarkable. Just the language in "A Soldier of the Great War"; and "Memoir from Antproof Case" are worth reading. The brillance of the later works are evident in "Refiner's Fire".

This is the best Fiction I have read in English since I read the translation of Milan Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness of Being". The beauty of the language is such that it would not be surprising if one required grief counseling after completing this book. The experience and beauty gained in the reading, is mourned soon after you have turned the last page and a feeling of loss descends upon you. Though the book is not sad. Completing it is. It is alive with the joy of lively and interesting characters who take you with them in their dreams and hopes for the future. It is only this that one loses by turning the last page. Intellectually a stimulating story and linguistically one of the best examples of how English should be written with an appreciation of the natural poetic imagery of the language.

A wonderful novel, typical of the author, that sprawls across the last century from Czarist Russia to the founding of Israel to the Hudson Valley to Rastafrian Jamaica...and so on. The story, while bordering on the absurd at times, will keep you cemented to your reading chair, and the ending is perfect, a complete validation of the novel's central premise: life is beautiful.

Helprin tells a story of grand scope and vision. A single lifetime that goes from foundling to Admiral and covers the globe. Helprin's ability to make believable the most fantastic of situations is unparalled. A book worthy of several reads.

If you do, you will deprive yourself of one of the joy's of reading this book. While endings typically conclude, surprise, or leave questions, Refiner's Fire does so much more: It affirms life. Read the book, page by page, and let the story carry you away. Then, as the pages remaining become thinner and thinner you will race to finish -- but you must not. Allow it to unfold and experience one of the most joyful and moving books ever. Just terrific