Winter's Tale (original 1983; edition 2005)

The descriptions are beautiful, but the plot plods along soooo slowly. Just as I contemplate returning it unfinished (something I try to avoid doing), it picks up again, only to slow back down. It also reminds me of the TV series Lost in that it raises questions of time travel that are never answered and ends with a sort of mystical, woo-woo quality. ( )

I don't even know where to start with a synopsis for this book, so I'll just skip that.

I have a feeling that the reason I'm not giving this book 5 stars shows more about what I'm lacking than about what the book is lacking. I felt myself on the verge of a huge epiphany throughout the book, but I just never got there. That has left me incredibly frustrated. Maybe reading through other reviews will help me see what I'm missing.

The language is absolutely gorgeous. It's just one of those books that is so dense and beautiful that you feel like you could eat it.

This was partly a love letter to New York. The author doesn't blindly love his city, he loves it warts and all and sees its potential to be something so much more than it is.

Mostly this was a book full of beautiful symbolism that I think was trying to tell me something about life, love, justice, time, immortality, and faith in mankind. Maybe. I was tempted to put this on my "mythology" shelf, because it felt like Helprin was creating something of a modern, American mythology. I have notes scribbled here about what I think this means or that means, but something would always happen to show me that I was wrong in my interpretation of something. I finally just gave up and read the book without trying so hard to figure everything out. I hoped that everything would come clear to me in the end, but it didn't.

Readers who enjoy lush language, people who love New York, and people who want a book to chew on for a while will probably love this. I truly hate to admit it, but this one defeated me. ( )

This book had me entranced for about the first two-thirds. I couldn't put it down! After that, it became a bit tedious. I found myself thinking, "Details, details, blah, blah, blah," as more and more characters were added who I was supposed to care about. I kept just wanting it to get back to those who I was so interested in the first two parts! About 500 pages in, I began to skim a lot and kind of just wanted it to be over. After such a wonderful build-up, the ending definitely did not meet my expectations. Nevertheless, I did enjoy this book as a whole, even though I felt a lot of fat could have been trimmed to make it a tighter read. ( )

This was one of those great reading experiences where you pick up a book and have absolutely no preconception of what it's going to be...and it turns out to be amazing.
I love all the strange details of machines and foods and random made-up New York things. By the end I didn't really care about the plot that much (building a bridge to the future or something?) but I just adore the world he created here.
I still have very specific pictures in my mind of the places and events. ( )

I really like the fantastical wonder about this book even though I was expecting a little more from it. I don't think it's a perfect novel..there was just a little too much romance in it for me to be honest, but I found it worth reading. My mom called my attention to the fact that Helprin is a political conservative but those who might avoid the novel based on that should be aware that it doesn't really delve into politics and has a far more fictional content complete with time travel elements as well.

In many ways, the novel succeeds in being fairly epic feeling with its 748 page length and its long span of eras and it really celebrates NYC in particular in all its majesty. At his best, Helprin is creative and seduces the reader in rejoicing in the anything can happen element that New York has always had. At its worst, its a little long winded and not as coherent overall as Helprin may have thought it was. Still, it's an intelligent diversion and, though it's no Crime and Punishment, there is an intellectual challenge to it that keeps the reader invested overall.

Some memorable quotes:

pg. 57 "The entire city was a far more complicated wheel of fortune than had ever been devised. It was a close model of the absolute processes of fate, as the innocent and the guilty alike were tumbled from its vast overstuffed drum, pushed along through trap-laden mazes, caught dying in airless cellars, or elevated to platforms of royal view."

pg. 107 "Beverly took back her pages and studied them. After a while, she looked up. 'They mean that the universe...growls, and sings. No, shouts.'"

pg. 522 "To be mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been."

pg. 618 "When he crossed the line, they fired with an exactitude that identified them as creatures of geometry."

pg. 645-646 "History is very difficult. A nearly infinite number of waves interact within an infinite number of conjunctions. As you might suspect, there has been of late a tendency for strong alignment, and many different waves are running together, in phase. I don't see, however, that they can be aligned by the year two thousand, which is only two weeks away, unless by some catastrophic event." ( )