Review of an Old Book: Winter's Tale/Mark Helprin
-
Reader-Writer
- Posts: 6
- Joined: 30 May 2015, 09:33
- Bookshelf Size: 0
Review of an Old Book: Winter's Tale/Mark Helprin
Good evening! I’m not yet licensed to review a new book on this site, so I’m offering a review of an old book that I read this spring. The book (Mark Helprin’s “Winter’s Tale,” 1980) was not one I chose for myself, but one my sister found with others in a yard sale and shipped to me across the U.S. I like reading fictional story and characters set against factual environment and history. They’re entertaining as well as educational, but sometimes the intriguing mentions of people, place, and events impel me to research them on the Web to determine if they’re fact.
As I read Winter’s Tale, a complicated fantasy/allegory of good versus evil set in New York City and surrounding areas, I found much to research. Author Helprin is deeply imaginative and equipped with language that is elegant, arcane, and evocative of a different time and place—all very effective in this intricate story that embraces more than a century beginning in the late 1800s. Many times he had me closing my eyes and reliving events, wondering where the fantasy would materialize next and if I would have a more certain understanding of the allegory. As I write this, I still wonder if I arrived where Helprin wanted me to be or at a place of my own choosing—in either case, it was a mesmerizing journey.
To make that journey believable, Helprin has woven many supporting stories into one allegorical battle of demons and angels who manifes as ordinary people with an uncanny realism to their characters and lives. He presents love stories that touched me, develops characters worthy of Dickens, and evil that made me cringe. He is at once brutal with his characters and gentle. …but it is all intertwined in a work that needs to be believed despite being fantasy.
Both his antagonists and protagonists are introduced in their own complex story lines weaving their journey from another time in another state until they all converge in New York City and become enmeshed in the real story he wants to tell: still a battle of good and evil, but now a love story of people for each other and for their city that alternately saves the lovers, delivers them to evil, and then makes the reader believe in reincarnation. Helprin must surely be native to New York City or the area, because both his enchantment with the city and his knowledge of its past gleam throughout his century of narrative to reflect what feels like history. New York gangs, tenement buildings and immigrants, aspects of the newspaper wars of the century, stevedores at the docks, graft and corruption, and society itself are all essential to the allegory, while familiar places such as the NY subway feature their own magic. Across the decades of his tale, a white horse watches over the hero of Winter’s Tale and everywhere snow and the frozen lakes represent a mystery of goodness and impending understanding.
Winter’s Tale is not for the person who looks up from the page or the movie screen only to frown and say, “I don’t get it.” The reader has to bring his or her imagination, a little faith and understanding, and a certain acceptance to this work. Parts of it shone with great clarity for me, other parts still have me mystified to the point where I asked a friend who had read it if she saw a great deal of religious allegory in it. I was a little relieved which she agreed. Yet Winter’s Tale is not a religious work!
As expected, Helprin’s work did send me to the Web to research geographic places, events, cited book titles, and even the name of a character who seemed to be a real person. My research was altogether unsatisfactory. I have since decided that everything I researched was fictitious, but Mark Helprin made them all seem real to me. What greater literary praise and recommendation can I offer? Please read it if you can find a copy! Reader-Writer
As I read Winter’s Tale, a complicated fantasy/allegory of good versus evil set in New York City and surrounding areas, I found much to research. Author Helprin is deeply imaginative and equipped with language that is elegant, arcane, and evocative of a different time and place—all very effective in this intricate story that embraces more than a century beginning in the late 1800s. Many times he had me closing my eyes and reliving events, wondering where the fantasy would materialize next and if I would have a more certain understanding of the allegory. As I write this, I still wonder if I arrived where Helprin wanted me to be or at a place of my own choosing—in either case, it was a mesmerizing journey.
To make that journey believable, Helprin has woven many supporting stories into one allegorical battle of demons and angels who manifes as ordinary people with an uncanny realism to their characters and lives. He presents love stories that touched me, develops characters worthy of Dickens, and evil that made me cringe. He is at once brutal with his characters and gentle. …but it is all intertwined in a work that needs to be believed despite being fantasy.
Both his antagonists and protagonists are introduced in their own complex story lines weaving their journey from another time in another state until they all converge in New York City and become enmeshed in the real story he wants to tell: still a battle of good and evil, but now a love story of people for each other and for their city that alternately saves the lovers, delivers them to evil, and then makes the reader believe in reincarnation. Helprin must surely be native to New York City or the area, because both his enchantment with the city and his knowledge of its past gleam throughout his century of narrative to reflect what feels like history. New York gangs, tenement buildings and immigrants, aspects of the newspaper wars of the century, stevedores at the docks, graft and corruption, and society itself are all essential to the allegory, while familiar places such as the NY subway feature their own magic. Across the decades of his tale, a white horse watches over the hero of Winter’s Tale and everywhere snow and the frozen lakes represent a mystery of goodness and impending understanding.
Winter’s Tale is not for the person who looks up from the page or the movie screen only to frown and say, “I don’t get it.” The reader has to bring his or her imagination, a little faith and understanding, and a certain acceptance to this work. Parts of it shone with great clarity for me, other parts still have me mystified to the point where I asked a friend who had read it if she saw a great deal of religious allegory in it. I was a little relieved which she agreed. Yet Winter’s Tale is not a religious work!
As expected, Helprin’s work did send me to the Web to research geographic places, events, cited book titles, and even the name of a character who seemed to be a real person. My research was altogether unsatisfactory. I have since decided that everything I researched was fictitious, but Mark Helprin made them all seem real to me. What greater literary praise and recommendation can I offer? Please read it if you can find a copy! Reader-Writer
