I'm about to embark on this new adventure. We'll soon find out if I can endure being away from the Malazen series for a while.

I nearly completed this book two weeks ago, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it, so I left the last 10 pages unread. Now that I'm finally done, I'm truly sorry to have awakened from what was a most magnificent dream. Because that's precisely what this book was for me - as I read it, I would enter a trance-like state. Vivid images would dance across my inner screen, sounds would burst forth and then gradually fade away. I witnessed an array of things, some truly terrible and others so breathtakingly beautiful that I felt like shedding tears. It was as if I was walking through the incredible landscapes of New York City and upstate. I soared through the air with Peter Lake and Anthasor, shuddered with disgust at the Short-Tails, and yearned for Beverly.

I'm still in the process of rousing myself from this dream, and as such, I'm sifting through the various symbols within the story. I'm well aware of the emotions they evoke in me, but I'm not yet entirely certain of their exact meanings.

I'm not entirely certain about what I just finished reading. It was both a delight and a challenge. I read the initial prerequisite 100 pages and wasn't sure if I wanted to carry on. Then I read an additional 50 pages and became completely captivated. At times, I would circle around this book as if it were a rattlesnake lying in wait on my reading table. And I would偷偷溜 off with a different book. Only to come back and read another 50 pages. This pattern continued for months until I had devoured all 700+ pages.

This is a fantasy book set in New York City. It is also a morality tale. Some readers refer to it as magical realism, but I found more elements of fantasy than reality within its pages. It almost had a steampunk feel to it. The story began at the turn of the century (1900) and concluded at the cusp of the next (1990s). The horse character was truly the best.
From reading the reviews of other readers, it appears that most people either adored this book or loathed it. I had a bit of both reactions. On the back of my paperback edition, there is a blurb from the front page of The New York Times Book Review: "...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 suppose it's safe to say that the reviewer had a favorable opinion. However, the overall Goodreads rating is only 3.50.
The author, Mark Helprin, must have a deep affection for New York City. He describes it almost as if it were a living entity. What Helprin can accomplish with a single sentence is truly astonishing. Almost every sentence seemed精心 crafted, not just haphazardly written. That is what I liked most about this book.

It made me appreciate the beauty and power of the written word.

It also made me realize that sometimes, a book can be both loved and hated simultaneously.

Such is the nature of literature.

I am truly at a loss for words when it comes to describing this book. It is a complex web of interconnected stories that, when pieced together, form a single, overarching narrative. As the book states about the city, one must view the whole, the big picture, rather than focusing solely on the individual parts. And yet, each of those parts is an essential piece of the whole, and their significance is somehow undeniable. I don't quite understand how, but I just know that they are. (Could this be why the machines are so crucial?)

In many respects, I feel as though this book is a love letter to a New York City that never truly existed.

However, it's not simply about that.

How does one summarize a book that is simultaneously about nothing and everything? Is it about love? Is it about faith? Is it about New York? Is it about sacrifice? Is it about capitalism? Is it about politics? I'm not sure. Perhaps it encompasses all of these themes and more.

I find myself with an abundance of questions....

Warning: Very Long Review

This is the first book of 2014 that has left me extremely disappointed.

Synopsis:

\\n  New York City is engulfed in arctic winds, dark nights, and white lights. Its life unfolds as it is an extraordinary hub of the imagination, the greatest house ever built, and nothing can hinder its vitality. One winter night, Peter Lake, an orphan and master-mechanic, attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side.

Although he believes the 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 and uneducated man, is driven by a love that he initially does not fully understand to stop time and bring back the dead. His great struggle, in a city always alight with its own energy and besieged by unprecedented winters, is one of the most beautiful and extraordinary stories in American literature.\\n

What a False Synopsis!

What is this story really about, you may ask?

It's about transcending the old and looking towards the new in a mythical New York City where anything magical can occur. There are no rules, nothing makes sense, winters seem to be the only season, horses can fly, people can time travel, see lights that others can't, see the future, bring back the dead, and true love conquers all.

This isn't magical realism; it's pure fantasy. There's no denying it. In magical realism, you don't suspend your disbelief even when there are fantastical elements. It's integrated in a way that makes you not even think that what's happening isn't possible. This goes beyond magical realism into total fantasy.

A Fantasy that Makes No Sense.

I usually have a high tolerance for suspension of disbelief, but believe me, even die-hard fantasy lovers will be scratching their heads if they read this novel.

I don't normally care about rules, and sometimes there doesn't need to be. However, how can characters who don't have a magical horse time travel and live longer than they should? How can characters who are a hundred years old drive a sled and go up and down the stairs as if they are in their thirties or forties? This isn't a suspension of disbelief; it requires the reader to think that anything is possible and there are no limits. There must be limits in fantasy; otherwise, it becomes a parody.

What Love Story?

The synopsis claims there is a love story in this novel. I ask, what love story? Do you mean the insta-love story that doesn't feel earned?

There is no real love story in this book. I don't know why the movie is centering on the part of this book that only takes up less than thirty-five percent of the whole novel (thirty at the beginning and five percent at the end).

Peter Lake is a burglar and a mechanic. A super-genius mechanic who falls \\"in love\\" with Beverly Penn, an eighteen-year-old heiress of the Penn newspaper legacy and a young woman diagnosed with Tuberculosis.

The \\"love\\" is so rapid, so much insta-love that it makes me sick. I understand Beverly has TB and doesn't have much time. However, the first thing she wants is to have sex with Peter Lake. They do, and Peter hatches a plan to marry her for her money. A gold digger? I'm sorry, but this isn't what I want to see. Then we find out that their love is true and honest. Blah, blah, blah. It's way too quick! There's no development. Are we supposed to believe this? Love comes with time. This is lust and teenage hormones. This is not the fairy tale love story the movie trailers are depicting.

Beverly is not an admirable heroine. She is whiny, and when she isn't whiny, she can see lights that no one understands. She can confuse physicists with the equations she writes in notebooks about how she can hear and see the stars and the light. How she can hear its music. Beverly is a seer of sorts, but Helprin doesn't come out and say this at all. Then she can protect Peter Lake with her love after she dies?

Plot

This novel, at seven hundred and seventy-eight pages, should have a plot, right?

Nope. It doesn't.

It might consider itself having a plot if the events made any sense and if the events had a reason for existing.

Why was there a battle at the Lake of the Coheerees near the end of the novel? If there was, shouldn't there have been points leading up to this eventual battle between the citizens of the lake and the Short Tails?

How in the world did three characters, a priest, a friend of Peter Lake's, and a third associate not die either? They had a job? A job to build a bridge? The bridge that brought the light but ended up failing?

All I can gather is that this novel wants to play with and pay tribute to the early 1900s era of New York City. A mythical New York City that doesn't exist and to plunge onwards to the year 2000. The time frame of 100 years. That things will change, new eras will rise, and the closing of old eras will always be hard to recover from.

I think the author was admirable in what he wanted to cover, but sadly, from a plot perspective, he fails to keep a coherent story together. He jumps around way too much without keeping his audience informed.

When you jump timelines, you need to be clear to the readers about when events are occurring. In the beginning, this is not an issue, but after the halfway point, it becomes a problem. There are times when I was reading and wasn't sure if it was the early 1900s, the mid-1980s, and only when the author mentioned that it was two weeks before 2000 did I know what time period I was in.

The plot did not help the characters either, or their stories. The novel wanted to tackle so many things that it left out fully developed characters. There are so many characters in this novel that once you start to care about a certain character or two, then other characters are introduced. Some come back into the story and earn their keep, while others I still don't understand their whole part in this novel.

The author thinks he is clever in writing this story, and the ending is by far the most infuriating. It's a classic cop-out: by not letting you know what happened to Peter Lake, to let you decide as a reader. Oh please! His story isn't that compelling that we even want to know if he lived or died. He should die if you ask me, and he did. He was old. Althansor went back to heaven because he symbolized an angel. Pearly Soames should have died too, but he didn't. For the love of all that is right in the world, the ending made no sense regarding the whole plot of the novel!

Themes and Symbols

When I first became interested in reading this book, it was after I saw the movie trailer and found out it was a book. There was a picture I found of Peter Lake and Pearly Soames on horses.



(Sorry for the monochrome, but I couldn't find the colored one).

This was an awesome image. Pearly Soames on the black horse and Peter Lake on the white horse, Alhansor. Of course, this isn't in the novel. Pearly Soames, if he is mentioned riding a horse, is on a speckled grey horse. Not that symbolic of his demonic nature, which you only see in the last five percent of the book.

One would think with such a contrast that the themes of good and evil, and light and dark would be apparent, right?

Somewhat. However, it's hard to tell with all the varying storylines that don't add up at the end. By the very end, there is the black and white symbolism with the white horse Alhansor, but at the end of the day, it isn't throughout the entire novel.

The other themes and symbols of love and time are there, but again, with the series of events, they are not fully expanded on (nor believable).

The Writing Itself

Mark Helprin can write. Oh, can he. Then again, that's probably the strongest part of this novel. He can write great sentences. He has a knack for descriptions and can write some great scenes.

HOWEVER

He goes overboard. There are times when he just rambles on and on (and on) about certain things. Winter, billiards, restaurants, sledding, lights, the city of New York, and other places. At first, it was fine. After a while, it gets tiring and bogged down. Descriptions should enhance a story, but not fill it to the brim and make everything else secondary.

You see, I'm in the camp of readers who do enjoy great writing, BUT it's not the end all and be all of books. You see, a writer needs to have a connection with their material through the concept they are trying to write about, through their plot, characters, themes, symbolism, and diction. All need to work together, and some will be stronger than others. However, in this novel, the only thing it has going for it is the prose. It's beautiful, I won't deny it. However, it's a smoke and mirror effect. Writers can please the mind with great sentences, but readers like me want to see more than just pretty poetic terms and descriptions.

I want characters that come alive. I want themes and messages that will stay with me. I want to think about this novel long after I read it, and I am left frustrated.

There are so many wonderful ideas in this book, but it FAILS to live up to its fullest potential. The writer was TOO AMBITIOUS and COULD NOT SUPPORT THE IDEAS. The writing might sway some to think this is a great work of literature, but literature is more than just the craft of writing. It needs to give me something to chew on, and this book fails to do so. It's incoherent, has poor characterization, too much time swapping without reason, and events that make little to no sense. There are no rules when there should be a few.

This is probably by far the worst book I've read this year because it is so disappointing. It could have been great, but now I can see why the movie isn't doing well. It's not the acting, but the base material isn't strong enough to make a good script. What did the director see in this, since he changed so much to make it a love story instead? All I see is wasted potential and an author who thinks he is extremely clever with all the philosophical ramblings he has in this novel. I'm sorry, but that isn't enough for me.

Peter Lake and Athansor were truly magnificent characters.

They seemed to leap off the page with their charm and allure. Mrs Gamely was an absolute delight, with her warm personality and kind heart.

Brenda, well, she was a bit of a mystery (shrugging).

Old Mr Penn was wonderful, and I adored his egalitarian ways.

The story had me completely torn between being fascinated by its twists and turns and the desire to trim it down a bit.

I think I need to let this book simmer in my mind for a while and then write a proper review. So, consider this a preliminary thought.

And, actually, I just read Will's review. He said everything so perfectly!

It really made me see the book from a different perspective.

I'm excited to see how my own thoughts will develop as I continue to think about this story.

The Worst Book I've Read This Year!

Oh my goodness! I have to say that this book is truly the worst one I've read this year. I simply can't believe how many completely useless details were written in it. It's just mind-boggling!

If it’s possible for a novel to establish its author as a good writer but a poor novelist, Winter’s Tale might be the book to do it. Helprin indeed has great talent for description and a good command of language. However, his talent for storytelling is rather remedial, and he almost lacks perspective.

There’s a passage between pages 600 and 700 where Helprin goes overboard in his description of the opening shot of a billiards game. The spheres crash, the green felt cowers, and the angles align – and it comes perilously close to being embarrassingly bad. What makes this important in analyzing Helprin’s work is that it reveals his belief that words are the only truly important elements of writing. That is, the ideas they express are accidental byproducts of the sounds they make and the fleeting effects they have.

There is, at times, a rather rich story here. Peter Lake is a likable character, and his romance with Beverly Penn is both intriguing and touching.

But then we set Mr. Lake aside for a long time – more than half of this enormous novel – and engage in excessive description. The rest of the characters, despite their clever names, all seem the same. There are some of Thomas Pynchon’s regrettable tricks, such as a set of employees named after books in an encyclopedia set. For a while, Helprin seems to experiment with hyper-realism. And those detours add up to approximately 350 pages that a reader begrudgingly endures.

Ah, the end. By around page 500, one begins to hope that the end will clarify all the numbing detail and description one has suffered through and still has to endure. But the end fails to do so. In fact, Helprin can’t seem to figure out how to end the novel. Is it about Peter Lake? The giant white horse? The villainous gang? New York City? The answer is yes and no.

The novel is about love. In fact, the epilogue of this massive work finds the author helpfully guiding the reader to look within his heart to understand the novel’s essence. For those readers annoyed by Tolstoy’s philosophy-of-history lecture at the end of War and Peace, Helprin offers a familiar experience. After almost 800 pages, he feels compelled to summarize. He even asks the reader if she remembers some of the characters from a month or so ago, to which the reader understandably responds aloud, “No, I don’t!”

Were this novel 400 pages long and focused solely on the Peter Lake and Beverly Penn characters, it would be recommendable. But at its actual length, it demands too much from the reader and gives back too little.

What the heck kind of ending was that?!

It truly left me baffled. Did Helprin just give up or what? It seemed so abrupt and unsatisfactory.

You know what made this marginally more interesting? Well, it was skimming it while listening to the Avengers: Endgame soundtrack.

The combination of the engaging music and the text added a strange sort of allure.

As I flipped through the pages, the powerful melodies in the background enhanced the overall experience.

It was as if the soundtrack was trying to breathe life into the somewhat lackluster story.

However, even with this addition, the ending still left a lot to be desired.

I couldn't help but wonder what could have been done differently to make it more impactful and fulfilling.

Maybe a bit more foreshadowing or a more detailed resolution would have made all the difference.

Nonetheless, the experience of skimming while listening to the Avengers: Endgame soundtrack was an interesting one, if only to try and salvage some enjoyment from an otherwise underwhelming ending.

I DID IT!

I survived this book!

I am the STRONGEST!

RAAAAAAAAAR!

\\n  \\n

That's me after finishing this story.

Soooo...I hated it.

I feel I read this at the wrong time in my life. Both in terms of my physical age and the era I'm living in. I should have read it when I was in my early 20s, still full of ideals and wonder, before the world changed with the new millennium and 9/11. I think back then, I might have been charmed. In fact, I was probably enchanted for the first half of Peter Lake's story. The beautiful Belle Epoque was so magical, even the orphans in tenements dying of TB seemed to have a certain charm. But then the time and place manipulation showed up, and I've never been a fan of that. After that, I spent most of the rest of the book trying to figure out where and when I was and how it all fit together. It just didn't seem to make sense. It was like everything was smooshed together and forced to work. For me, it went from being surreal and magical to pretentious and then just plain silly. I guess if I had to write a paper on this book, I could say that Peter Lake represents the last beautiful age in America, while Pearly Somes is the antithesis of our sentimentality. The Ghost might be a mockery of our society, with Craig Binky representing the 1% and Harry Penn being the hard-working, deserving millionaire. Maybe if the whole book had been a satire, laughing at our culture's desire to recapture the past while making bad decisions for the future, it might not have been so tedious. But all the misused words and ridiculous names just grated on me. The story was trying to be too many things at once. It was a love poem to New York City, a story about a fallen angel, a romance, and more. It was just too much for me to handle. I think in my old age, I need more structure and less chaos in my reading.

I have a plethora of thoughts, so please bear with me.

This is an exquisitely gorgeous book. It is a large, sprawling work that is also tightly woven. Indeed, I have placed it on the "fairytales" shelf, for it is a true fairy tale. A fairy tale about a shining city that has been iced over by a glorious winter. It is a tale of a white horse, a noble thief, and a beautiful young maiden. However, they are not the only characters, the only lovers, or the only fighters. The white horse, Athansor, also appears to a young woman named Christiania. The thief is not only a mechanic but also steals more than just a young girl's heart and fixes more than just machines.

The prose in this book is so magnificent that I wanted to purchase a small apartment in Chelsea for it and spoil it rotten, if you catch my drift. The characters are both fantastic and fantastical, ranging from Peter Lake and Beverly to the Short Tails gang with their mean stature and hands like paws. Then there is Virginia and Hardesty, Virginia's mother Mrs. Gamely (who has a chicken in her handbag), Christiania and Asbury (arguably the most romantic love story in the book), and countless others. You can hear their voices, see their clothes, their eyes and hair. You can smell the sharp odors of the frozen city and hear the sound of skates on the frozen Lake of the Coheeries.

This book was truly a feast, and I can't fathom why it took me so long to pick it up! Guy Kay recommended this book to me a good four years ago, and I added it to my to-read list but sort of ignored it due to the completely inadequate description here on Goodreads. "The story of middle-aged burglar Peter Lake and a dying young woman." That's it. Seriously? Is that all you have? That's like saying Moby-Dick is about a bored guy looking for a job on a boat. What about the rest of the book? Peter Lake and Beverly are just the beginning, and so much more unfolds from there. I was almost unprepared for it. Also, Peter Lake isn't the main character; New York is. I was just speaking at a writing conference about the importance of first pages. The first pages of a book should introduce the main character and make promises about the ending of the book. And the first pages of this book are dedicated to the city, and the city is the heart of the book. It reminded me, in a way, of The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, in which the Wessex countryside is truly the main character and it destroys those who don't respect it. New York is alive in this book, as is the winter, and they struggle along with the humans in this glorious story.

Note about the movie: I attempted to read the book first but ended up seeing the movie a few weeks prior. Now I'm glad. I really liked the movie and thought that the book would simply explain more of it (obviously a great deal has to be cut from a book this size to make it a movie). Whoa. I have newfound respect for the screenwriter and a new appreciation of the movie. The entire second half of the movie is completely different. Like, ENTIRELY, COMPLETELY NEW MATERIAL. Why? Because. Because this book is essentially unfilmable. So much of it is cerebral, for one thing. For another, it spans a century, and that century doesn't pass in the blink of an eye like it does on screen. There are over a dozen major characters, and to understand them, you have to know all about their childhoods, their families, and so on. Possibly, if you made the book into a miniseries or even a 12+ episode TV show, you could cover it all. But not in a movie. So I actually really loved how they just sort of plucked a couple of key elements from the modern story and ran with it. It was choppy, and knowing Virginia as well as I do from the book, I have more appreciation for her in the movie, but yeah, it's very, VERY different. VERY.

Ok, I'm finally done with this book!

I am so happy that I could jump up and down for joy. I have a habit of always finishing a book that I start. However, when I first saw the size of this book and read some of the negative reviews, I was really skeptical. But I still decided to keep on the beaten path and persevered.

To my disappointment, though I loved characters like Peter Lake, Beverly Penn, and the white horse, the story lines did not culminate or come together in any meaningful fashion. I am left wondering "What in the heck"!

I even saw the movie twice in an attempt to put the context of the book into some kind of understandable form. But unfortunately, most of the characters in the book were left out of the movie.

It's true that the movie is charming. So, my advice is to save yourself the trouble, just see the movie and forget about the book!

I feel as if it took an eternity, a whopping twelve hundred years, to make my way through this book. I bulldozed (intentionally using this reference) through it, determined not to let its great length and complex density defeat me. However, this is precisely why I'm now disappointed, annoyed, and utterly tired.

To be fair, when Helprin isn't going on and on poetically about 1) snow, 2) justice, or 3) urban planning, the plot actually progresses steadily. The fantasy elements are enchanting, the jokes are humorous, and the characters are delightfully out of place in time – and not just the ones who are literally time-jumpers. It's the first book I've read that has accurately captured that feeling I sometimes have, that I would have been more at home living in a completely different century.

Now, I often wrongly classify dense, lofty writing into the "he/she must be smarter than me" category. But I don't think you can mistake Helprin's endless, repetitive exploration of absolutes for anything other than a woeful lack of proper editing. Also, I despise absolutes. The concept of a "pure" anything is, in my opinion, dangerous and foolhardy. And Helprin dwells on two major ones – justice and love – until they become as abstract and unmanageable as possible, and no possible payoff could ever equal the enormous build-up.

And really, despite what anyone might say about the Eskimos, there are probably only around four or five ways you can describe snow without becoming a dull and monotonous bore.

All that being said, the book does reach some remarkable heights, and it's usually in the simpler, plot-driven sections. The rescue of the Polaris by the Coheeries inhabitants? Absolutely wonderful. And it only took ten pages!