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Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
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Winter's Tale

by Mark Helprin

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1,636391,799 (4.27)71
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Some great writing illustrating mind expanding scenes. ( )
charlie68 | Jul 6, 2009 |  
Perhaps it was because it was an audiobook, perhaps because I was distracted by life, but I lost interest about halfway through. ( )
LCB48 | Jul 4, 2009 |  
This was magic realism, I think, with that very languid, dreamy, slightly distant feel I've come to associate with magic realism. Very hard to get into: nothing I actually disliked, but there was no immediacy, nothing to grasp, no characters that came alive.That's not entirely true; Peter was intermittently real, and Virginia, and various of the little vignettes like the lovers talking through the walls. But Helprin always whisked them out of sight again. I suppose the real main character was the city, but it wasn't presented very clearly either, I don't have any picture of it. I do like the irony in making New York the site for the bridge to heaven and the ideal of the Perfectly Just city. Having read some of Helpirns' articles, though, I'm not sure I'd want to live in his idea of a perfectly just city. Even in Winter's Tale I thought he had too great a tolerance for collateral damage.Still, there was compassion. It's hard for me to realise that someone with political beliefs so markedly different from mine can still share many of the same values. Something to remember. ( )
krisiti | Jul 1, 2009 |  
One of those rare books I read over and over. Helprin is a master of magical realism. Splendid prose, a flying horse, the Short Tails roaming the rafters of Grand Central Station, a tubercular heiress on a rooftop, and Peter Lake -- master mechanic and second-story man of New York's Belle Epoque. What's not to love? ( )
Laurenbdavis | Apr 29, 2009 |  
Frankly, one of the best books I ever read. The combination of magical realism and historical New York City are irresistable. ( )
plettie2 | Apr 29, 2009 |  
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Series (with order)
Canonical Title
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Awards and honors
Epigraph
Dedication
FOR MY FATHER
Know One Knows the City Better
First words
There was a white horse, on a quiet winter morning when snow covered the streets gently and was not deep, and the sky was swept with vibrant stars, except in the east, where dawn was beginning in a light blue flood. The air was motionless, but would soon start to move as the sun came up and winds from Canada came charging down the Hudson.
Quotations
Last words
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Book description

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0156031191, Paperback)

New York City is subsumed in arctic winds, dark nights, and white lights, its life unfolds, for it is an extraordinary hive of the imagination, the greatest house ever built, and nothing exists that can check its vitality. One night in winter, Peter Lake--orphan and master-mechanic, attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side.

Though he thinks hte house is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the love between Peter Lake, a middle-aged Irish burglar, and Beverly Penn, a young girl, who is dying.

Peter Lake, a simple, uneducated man, because of a love that, at first he does not fully understand, is driven to stop time and bring back the dead. His great struggle, in a city ever alight with its own energy and beseiged by unprecedented winters, is one of the most beautiful and extraordinary stories of American literature.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:13 -0400)

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