An aggregate rating of three-point-six stars? Three-point-six? Really? You people are nuts. If I could write like Mark Helprin, I would ask for nothing more out of life. In my ideal world, if you give one or two stars to a Mark Helprin novel, someone comes out to your house, slaps you, and takes away your Kindle. I'm only giving this book five stars because there is no six. It's right up there with Helprin's other masterpiece of New York life, "Winter's Tale."
On the surface, this story is about an American Jew who served as a parachutist with the 82nd Airborne Division in WWII, and he's now freshly home in postwar Manhattan where he's inherited his father's business and proceeds to fall deeply and passionately in love with a young heiress/Broadway actress. On top of this, he has to deal with a Mob boss who's out to bankrupt him, or worse. That's what the book's about on the surface. But in every paragraph, every line, and every word, what it's REALLY about is the necessity to live life by a code, by a set of values that, if you believe you have a soul, you can't ever surrender or compromise. It's about living life as if the good were always eventually, someday, rewarded, evil always punished, and we all lived forever, despite the fact that none of those propositions is true. We all know the good and the beautiful are sometimes defeated utterly, and we all die, and this book is kind of an extended answer to those bleak truths. It's also, in itself, as beautiful as a hand-painted porcelain vase. Harry, the protagonist, is about as quietly tough as it's possible for a man to be, but he also has an eye for beauty that really only Mark Helprin could have, and an open, lively intelligence and curiosity about the world that make him relatable to the ordinary reader.
I should mention that if you're a reader who's used to a very spare, stripped-down, Hemingway-esque prose style, you should know going in, that's not Helprin by a longshot. His writing is lyrical, poetic, high-flown, full of striking images, metaphors, and superlatives, with brief diversions to reflect on the nature of this and that. Some people might find his style ornate or florid; I just think it's beautiful. Keep in mind, you don't need to do a book report or write a term paper on the book - just do what I did and let all the imagery and language and metaphor just wash over you like a waterfall. Don't analyze or parse it, just read it. By the time you finish, I think you'll realize, the effect of the language and style is cumulative, and ultimately it's part of what makes this book so deep and profound, the kind of book you'll be thinking about for days.
We were all born to do certain things, whether we ever find them or not. Mark Helprin is lucky enough that he's doing exactly what he was born to do: write deep, thoughtful, profound, emotionally moving novels about hard choices, fragile beauties, and the people and places he loves.
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A big disappointment
Three words: a total bore. I bought this because I was awed by Winter's Tale. This is no Winter's Tale. It just simply never got interesting and I tossed it.
Spitzenrezensionen aus anderen Ländern
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Jerry TollinskyBewertet in Kanada am 17. März 2014
The best book I have ever read!
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Mrs Jill E CarterBewertet in Großbritannien am 10. September 2014
My best-ever read
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