Ellis Island and Other Stories [Paperback]

Mark Helprin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 31, 1991

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award and nominee for both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the American Book Award, these ten stories and the celebrated title novella are “beyond compare . . . [Helprin’s] imagination should be protected by some intellectual equivalent of the National Park Service” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

Editorial Reviews

Review

PRAISE FOR ELLIS ISLAND
"It's genius. . . . Ellis Island ascends to the peak of literary achievement." - The Boston Globe

"Such an ambitious reach is almost unheard of in our short fiction." - The New York Times Book Review

"Constant brilliance . . . Rarely less than breathtaking . . . every single story sings with purity, vibrates with light."- The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

These ten stories and the title novella, Ellis Island, exhibit a tremendous range and versatility of style and technique and yet are closely unified in their beauty and in their concern with enduring and universal questions.

"It's genius . . . Ellis Island ascends to the peak of literary achievement." -- The Boston Globe

"Such an ambitious reach is almost unheard of in our short fiction." -- New York Times Book Review

"Constant brilliance . . . Rarely less than heartbreaking . . . every single story sings with purity, vibrates with light." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Stories beyond compare . . . [Helprin's] imagination should be protected by some intellectual equivalent of the National Park Service." -- Philadelphia Inquirer

Mark Helprin is the author of, among other titles, the New York Times best-sellers Winter's Tale and A Soldier of the Great War.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Brace & Company (May 31, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156283158
• ISBN-13: 978-0156283151
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,044,966 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Educated at Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford, MARK HELPRIN served in the Israeli army, Israeli Air Force, and British Merchant Navy. He is the author of, among other titles, A Dove of the East and Other Stories, Refiner's Fire, Winter's Tale, and A Soldier of the Great War. He lives in Virginia.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Prelude to Great Works, May 8, 2001

By 

Baddyo - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Ellis Island and Other Stories (Paperback)

I am not a regular reader of short stories. In general, I do not like them. Still, as a Mark Helprin fan, this is one of his few works that I had not read. I pressed on ... when I concluded the final story, Ellis Island, I felt completely satisfied with the journey. If you've never read Helprin, I believe "Ellis Island" and "A Vermont Tale" are most representative of his longer works. Each story will tempt you to read his novels, all of which are poetic magic. As I read through these stories, I saw glimpses of each subsequent novel, particularly my favorite, "A Winter's Tale." If you've read Helprin before, you owe yourself the time to read this collection. If you are new to Helprin, this work will encourage you to read more.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Beautiful Stories, September 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Ellis Island and Other Stories (Paperback)

My first encounter with Mark Helprin was his long novel, Winter's Tale. I thought it was perfect: glorious and mysterious, realistic and magical, funny and fantastic and wondrous and sad. It was almost too much of a good thing; sort of like chocolate decadence topped with mocha ice-cream and drenched in hot fudge sauce.

The stories in Ellis Island and Other Stories offer the same enticing overdose of goodness but in smaller doses. Lest you be thrown off by the cover or the title, these stories are definitely not history or even historical fiction. They are not exclusively about immigrants, Europe or the War, although threads of these subjects do run through them.

The title story, Ellis Island is the longest and the last. It is about the Ellis Island and immigration, of course, but it is also fantastic fantasy complete with a wonderful machine that melts the snow from the streets supported only by its own jets of fire, the Saromsker Rabbi and his glorious sermon on bees, the lovely Hava, and Elise, whose hair is nothing less than a pillar of fire. Of the eleven stories, Ellis Island comes closest to Winter's Tale in its spirit of fantasy, although A Vermont Winter best describes the perfection of a deep Northeastern snow. As in Winter's Tale, in Ellis Island, Helprin is not averse to destroying beautiful things for the sake of a larger good, even if the logic of his narrative does not demand that he do so. But that, you see, is Helprin; for him death is just another part of art.

All of these stories are brilliant and all of them are beautiful. In The Schreuderspitze, a photographer deals with tragedy in the luminous beauty of the Alps; in Letters from the Samantha, questions of humanity and guilt are dealt with on an iron-hulled sailing ship in 1879; in Martin Bayer, we get to know a small boy on the eve of war; in North Light and A Room of Frail Dancers, we glimpse the devastating effects of battle on soldiers. La Volpaia is wonderful, wise and witty and Tamar is nothing if not lovely in the extreme. White Gardens and Palais de Justice defy any sort of description; you simply must read them and then savor them yourself.

Anyone who has read any of Helprin's other works knows he certainly has a way with words. Here are words from the end of Tamar that not only describe the story's beautiful seventeen year old protagonist, but serve to sum up this volume as a whole: Perhaps things are most beautiful when they are not quite real; when you look upon a scene as an outsider; and come to possess it in its entirety and forever; when you live in the present with the lucidity and feeling of memory; when for want of connection, the world deepens and becomes art.

These stories are nothing if they are not art.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All Helprin fans should run and buy this collection, May 19, 2000

By 

M. H. Bayliss "book queen" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ellis Island and Other Stories (Paperback)

I read this beautiful short story collection after just finishing all of Helprin's lengthy novels. I was surprised that a writer who produced such brilliant long works of fiction (A Winter's Tale and Soldier of the Great War) could write just as well in a short story format. These stories are incredible. The one about the loons in Vermont is one of the most devastatingly haunting stories I have ever read. The opening story is one of my favorites as well. After finishing all of Helprin's works, I'm convinced that he's one of those rare writers that inspires you to want to walk around in his mind for a day to see how he pens such memorable works.