This was a long book, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I never read a WW I novel written from the perspective of an Italian soldier. Alessandro Giuliani tells his life story to an illiterate young man as they walk miles upon miles after being thrown off a bus. As the story unfolds, we are treated to the vagaries and whimsical turns that life can take which lead us into uncharted waters. This book made me laugh out loud and cry real tears. It is a true depiction of life with all it's crazy twists and turns. Long read, but worth it. ( )

In 1964, Alessandro Giuliani, an old man who is a professor of aesthetics, catches the last streetcar from Rome to Monte Prato, where he wishes to visit his granddaughter and her family. Through a bizarre circumstance, he finds himself walking to Monte Prato along with Nicoló Sambucca, a 17 year old illiterate factory worker. Taking the high road over the mountains for a journey of days and nights, Alessandro tells an increasingly fascinated Nicoló the story of his life.

Alessandro Giuliani is the son of a well-to lawyer who is enthralled by beauty--not just the classical beauty of art, but also of music and nature, of life itself. He is exuberant, living life as he finds it, and reveling in the beauty that is everywhere around him. His family is a close one, and Alessandro loves them passionately. He races locomotives on his horse Enrico, he rows, he climbs mountains. He lives, utterly.

But in 1914, war engulfs Europe and Alessandro is drawn into the conflict. For four years, Alessandro is a soldier of the line, fighting in the trenches under unspeakable conditions, a hero, a prisoner, and finally a deserter. He falls deeply in love--only to lose his beloved to the war as he has lost everyone else he has loved to the war in one way or another. But Alessandro never loses his exaltation in beauty even in the midst of unimaginable horror, his quest for a God in which he alternates belief and disbelief with utter serenity, and his realized hope of redemption and resurrection.

As far as I’m concerned, there is no way to summarize this book adequately in a review, because I personally can not find a way to describe the dazzling richness of the prose, the always off-center viewpoint of Alessandro who is both deeply affected by the war and yet unscathed at his core, the lyrical descriptions especially of the mountains the sheer exaltation of the prose. In hands less skilled, Alessandro would be a caricature, a joke. Instead, for 860 pages, Alessandro burns as brilliantly as any of the stars over the Alto Adige, totally believable, completely real, in a world gone mad.

The other characters in the story, both major and minor, are utterly real and unforgettable as well: his gentle father, his fried Rafi, his wartime comrades in his regiment, the brief, searing acquaintances with other Italian soldiers whose names he doesn’t ever know but whose memories stay with him, his beloved Ariane, and most especially, because he epitomizes the insanity of war, the dwarf Orfeo. All are etched with prose that is as lucid as it is extravagant, no mean feat.

The last chapter is so heartbreaking that it is painful to read.

I have never read a work of fiction that so deeply moved me, both when I read when it was published in 1991, and now, in a much different time, in 2009. It is magnificent, a tour de force, both an epic saga and a paean to love of family. Written by an American, it is also very Italian, and captures that skeptical attitude that Italians bring to war in particular. Its descriptions of the war are searing. The people in it are unforgettable. It is a masterpiece. ( )

I have counted Mark Helprin among my favorite authors since reading "A Winter's Tale" sometime in the early '90s. I put off reading this book for a long time because of its length, but I finally finished it. While it was slow in parts, I still really enjoyed it. Helprin employs such beautiful language in his descriptions, and his stories are always so bittersweet. I think part of the reason I love his books is that they always make me cry, and I can't help loving a book that makes me feel great emotion. I've read a lot of books (both fiction and non-fiction) about World War One, and this was one of the only ones that was set in Italy. The other one I can think of is "A Farewell to Arms," which was also very sad. I think part of what another reviewer didn't like about the pointlessness of the book was probably intentional on Helprin's part, since WWI was a pointless war. Anyway, I really enjoyed the book and am glad I finally made the time to read it. ( )

2545 A Soldier of the Great War, by Mark Helprin (read 28 Oct 1993) This book tells of Alessandro Giuliani, son of a Roman lawyer, who does all kinds of impossible things--running on top of trains, etc., who is in the World War, where he has fantastic adventures and accomplished impossible feats, and I don't know if there is any relation to reality of anything he went through. The whole story seemed pointless. The nearly 800 pages were a chore to read at times. The prose is clearly and beautifully written, but the story line had a lot of drag and there is no real 'plot." I was glad when I had finished the book. ( )

A truly great book. ( )