Winter's Tale

The characters, the story, it’s magical. Best author, I can’t say enough about this book. Must read. I don’t want it to end.

Rarely do I try to rephrase what has already been said in previous reviews. But then again, rarely does a reviewer get to talk about something so monumental as Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale. For any potential readers who might be looking at this page, please read my little commentary, and if you are about to stop reading my little commentary- just go and read this book. Winter's Tale violates all boundaries of normal fiction. Everything you are used to, the consistancy of time and location, history and even characters, gets rearranged for something incredible. The story spans about a century in New York City, and the descriptions of the city and a particular suburb are sweeping and yet delicate, capturing the skyline yet also the starry splendor of the ceiling of Grand Central Terminal. The characters are interwoven throughout the story, and the reader is always amazed to find this man and that girl or this boy and that horse showing up and then disappearing again. It is the flow of characters and locations that give such an epic feel to Mark Helprin's story. Another aspect that either turns people to or away Winter's Tale is the subtle hints of the fantastical that interrupt the ordinary world. When first reading the story (and if you do read it, you will go back for more and more and more...) you find yourself in history. Helprin's events and times are very accurate, and you appear to be in New York City at the turn of the century, and that is that. When (what can only be described as) magical things begin occuring periodically throughout the novel, the entire atmosphere changes, and you never know what or when characters and time and locations can break the bonds of normal thinking. This fantastical touch to a historical setting is rare, and the fact that Helprin uses it as a key tool in painting his dramatic picture makes it one of the most gripping parts of the novel. Some people say that they never get into Helprin's world, and that they get lost along the way and never enjoy Winter's Tale. The official page-count is 688. I am not going to lie to you. I am a very strong reader, and Winter's Tale took me a month and a half of pretty steady reading. It honestly feels like the pages go into the upper thousands. BUT. I read it to savor every word. When each description is so vivid and every word has a purpose in this great picture, I revelled in every moment that I was stuck in Helprin's world. The best reading of this book is an involved reading, because anything less and a reader can very easily burn out in the beginning. Anything else before i wrap it up---- I was given this book as a birthday present from an uncle, who gave me John Fowles' The Magus at the same time. At the time, I thought it was a pretty mediocre gift, and the two thick tomes sat on my shelf for half a year. I decided to pick up The Magus first, and immediately fell in love (and if you dont have that one, especially if you like Winter's Tale, get it)

You will never be the same after reading A Winter's Tale. It's sheer lyric beauty and dazzling prose will stay with you long after you close the last page. You can feel the cold, you can imagine the lost world of New York, you can be totally absorbed by Helprin's magic realism of sorts as he transports you to an earlier time. No one who likes New York should miss this book. After rereading it recently, I realized that few books I have ever read hold together as well as this one, surely Helprin's masterpiece. Jack Finney's Time and Again is the only book that comes close to that turn of the century New York, but it's not nearly the work of genius that this is. Savor it and reread it every few years.

This is one of very few books I have read which leaves your head swimming from the power of the prose. It is remarkable to an amateur writer that someone could produce a work of this length, but that all the way through it you have to take a break to savor the words you are reading. This book is a fantasy, a century long painting that uses one of the most amazing backgrounds on earth - 20th century New York - to lovingly, sensuously showcase humans at their essences. Helprin gives wings to our basic wishes, longings, and to those issues at our cores that make us what we are - love, hope, hatred, greed, truth, deceit, despair, and finally courage and joy. Certainly, he caricatures each of these, but in a graceful and humorous way. I wished to go back to the turn of the century - to paddle around the waters of Peter Lake's origin, to fly up the frozen Hudson in a sleigh, to watch those with true courage against fools and cheats. I have re-read this book constantly - like the painting of the golden Gate Bridge - once finished, it's time to start again.

I admit it--"Winter's Tale" first caught my eye because of its cover, a muted and evocative photograph of Grand Central Station sometime in the 1930s or 1940s. I bought it after reading Benjamin DeMott's how-could-you-not-read-it review in the New York Times (it's archived on-line at the NYT site, and I highly recommend looking it up). And then I read it. It took me many months to get through, because this is not a book that I plowed through, but one I savored. There are many unforgettable scenes in Helprin's book, but if I had to choose one as my favorite, it is Helprin's description of Beverly climbing out to her rooftop apartment and gazing at the constellations, which is so breathtaking that it could make you swoon. I didn't think about this book in political terms, as some reviewers here suggest, but as a old-fashioned bedtime story suitable for any generation, a rarity these days. And I loved the names of the Heleprin's characters that populated this imaginary Gotham--Asbury Gunwillow, Hardesty Marratta, Romeo Tan, Reverend Mootfowl, Cecil Mature (aka Cecil Wooley), Christiana Freibourg, Praeger de Pinto, Daythril Moobcot. I was also delighted and amazed by how Helprin was able to transform New York into a glittering, fantastical place yet at the same time remain faithful to its spirit and teeming essence. I must say here that I hated One Hundred Years of Solitude, which struck me as a sprawling bore. Winter's Tale has a pulse and a heart--a big heart--that anchors the entire story. Unlike Marquez, Helprin manages to harness all the energy on the page into something close to a moral testament. I couldn't agree more with DeMott, who wrote: "Not for some time have I read a work as funny, thoughtful, passionate or large-souled." It reads like a dream, and, unlike most dreams, you will remember it for many winters to come.