Winter's Tale
It's not every day you read a book review like this one;
On my first read, I stayed up through an entire night, finished the whole 768-page novel and wept for a full 15 minutes, then turned back to page one and started again. I personally bought, oh, maybe 50 copies of the book and gave them away to friends, pressing it upon them with the fervor of a mad evangelist. I try to read the book once a year, as a reality check and a spiritual bracer. I made two trips from California to interview Helprin in his New York home, trying my damnedest to understand the mind where this colossal, towering work of the imagination originated.
Until now, though, I’ve never written about Winter’s Tale, out of abject fear. I was unsure that I could do the book justice, as was critic Benjamin DeMott in the New York Times Book Review, who wrote, “I find myself nervous, to a degree I don’t recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance.”I picked up a paperback version of WT in a resort gift shop many years ago. My experience was very similar - I read it virtually from beginning to end, and for the next two days, walked about in a dream state.
It's difficult to explain what Winter's Tale is about - the review goes a long way in capturing its essence, though, so read the whole thing.
A word of warning to aspiring fiction writers - Helprin at his best, as in Winter's Tale (and in equal measure, Soldier of the Great War) can be a deeply demoralizing experience. Or as someone I know put it, after reading Soldier. "I don't know how I can go back to reading other authors after this."