  A story of breathtaking scope, beautifully told, 1999-04-29
An extraordinary book, quite unlike anything else.It covers the various adventures of a dashing young Italian around the time of WW1, including foolhardy student capers, colourful romantic entanglements, shocking combat scenes, dramatic mountaineering experiences, terrifying brushes with death and an epic love story, all told by an ageing man walking along a road having missed his bus. Some of the characters and episodes are a bit too surreal and uneven for some tastes, but the overall effect takes the breath away.
A facinating slice of history and life - very well delivered, 1999-04-27
This is one of the most beautifully composed and gripping tales I have read in a long long time. A thrilling journey through the life of an Italian Solider in the First World war it touches on topics much wider and more fundamental to life than to war. The book is masterfully written and the choice of words and use of language skillfully managed. It is not however a book that you can only read a page or two of so be prepared to fend of the "Just what is it you're reading that is so good" questions. Buy it and read it.
Excellent Heminwayesque WWI Drama, 2002-12-02
Helprin is a first-rate author, as has been attested to many times. This is his masterwork, in my opinion. Though not without its flaws, the book is a real testament to the craft of writing. I was awed by the amount of research Helprin must have done before writing this book. He obviously spent a great deal of time in Italy and his descriptions of Rome and of the Italian countryside are particularly vivid. The love-story is never sapid or oversentimentalized. But it is wrenching. My only quibble is that Allesandro might be just a bit too perfect. If he bumbled occasionally or expressed something other than supreme self confidence on all occasions, he would have been a bit more believable. I guess I enjoyed him more as an old man (at least he's somewhat more vulnerable then). This book really has a bit of everything: suspense, intrigue, romance, war, bravery, loss, nostalgia, you-name-it. Because of the setting and the era depicted, some readers may be reminded of Hemingway's WWI novel, A Farewell to Arms. I believe Helprin surpasses Hemingway in terms of descriptive brilliance and in bringing the era to life. I also think he succeeds in a greater measure in making his readers care about his characters. The only reason I'm not giving it five stars is slightly one-dimensional characterizations. It's still an absolutely superb story told by a brilliant storyteller. As to Helprin's other major works I would recommend both Winters Tale and Refiner's Fire. I thought his subsequent novel, Memoirs from an Antproof Case, was a disappointment. Its protagonist too closely resembles Allesandro (though a lot more anal retentive) and Helprin seems to repeat himself in other ways as well. His short story collection, Ellis Island, is uneven, but conatins some gems.
A Soldier of the Great War... a book who's time will come, 2002-07-16
I picked this book up mistaking it for another. I am very pleased I did. It is not often that a book engages one from first to last, it was a captivating expereince. There were complaints through-out my household as to "what the heck is he doing with that book". It made me quite anti-social.
Some books rely on the scene setting to drag you along "ever hopeful" , some seem to perk up in the mid-riff and others entice one with the closing chapters and the "resolution". Here, I was picked up and carried along, constantly both satisfied and wanting more. I am unable to imagine a better conclusion to the story and have been left wondering what the heck I am going to read now.
Mark, you have given me great pleasure and now, untold grief!
This is a book who's time will come as people who have read it, recover and start to tell others. And all because a boy was late for a bus......
Helprin's richest work. Immerse yourself in its beauties., 2004-02-23
Mark Helprin once offered this advice to an aspiring writer on how best to construct a work, to grab the attention of the reader (and here I can only paraphrase, as I have misplaced the source document): "Treat your story as if a stone thrown into a still pool, coming to rest at the bottom. Then dive in after it." The paraphrase is accurate enough for my purposes, and the message is clear: Know well the end of your journey before you begin it. Little did I know then, when I had meandered across Helprin's advice, that it would be central to my ability to write my thoughts on "A Soldier of the Great War." For about the same length of time as that advice had been imprinted somewhere in my brain, I had also been faced with the daunting prospect of commenting on a thrice-read book, now bulging with scores of page markers as reminders to me of phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and even full pages, all worthy of comment. And, it seemed, the longer I put this task off, the more daunting it became. Fortunately, this block was broken in the recent past, when I needed to give careful thought to a birthday gift for a friend. The gift couldn't appear to be too lavish, except in the riches of its contents. It needed to be something that would be new to this friend (and here I was at some risk), and at the same time something that would not soon - if ever - be forgotten. In the end, I decided to chance it with "A Soldier of the Great War," enclosing a brief note regarding what was in store. And the working through of that note was the curative that I needed for providing my comments on this Helprin work. So I threw my own stone into the pool and dove in after it. "A Soldier of the Great War" flows over with great themes, the long arc of which is the relating of its protagonist's - Alessandro Giuliani's - life story, told in retrospect from Alessandro's memories of that life to a youth who accompanies him on a seemingly short journey from Rome to a near-distant village. And, following his own advice regarding the stone thrown in the pool, Helprin's lyrical, singing prose begins with the story's first paragraph, drawing the reader, too, to dive in, and doesn't let up until the very last page (where it then lingers for a very long while). The overarching themes are classic: love and war; of love discovered, then lost, then found once again; of the blunt impersonality and the lunacy of war. They - and others - are all juxtaposed with typical Helpernian brilliance. There are maniacally funny set-pieces, interwoven so seamlessly into the narrative that one is not aware at first of Helprin's skill with the set-piece device as one is drawn in. (These include an excursion to the plains of Eastern Hungary that is one of the most remarkable of such pieces ever written.) There are passages of heartrending grief quite beyond one's ability to deal with them. And the story teems with characters both bigger than life and smaller and meaner than dirt. But, at its core, "A Soldier of the Great War" is a story about love and beauty and the permutations one can make of those two words. And it is for this reason that I chose it. If you're like me, it will take you forever and a day to read it, as you find yourself re-reading - often several times, and on occasion out-loud just to hear what Helprin's words sound like - passage after passage after soaring passage. This book is, also, everything that has already been written about it. Like Helprin's other major works, it has autobiographical content of both experience and opinion interspersed throughout. (One need not be aware of this before the fact; it is inessential to the story.) The story is indeed a classic Bildungsroman - a "novel of formation" that traces Alessandro Giuliani's growth in spirit over his life - and one of the very best of its genre. There is a certain convenience that, at least alphabetically, Helprin fits comfortably between Heller and Hemingway. But use this convenience wisely, as when browsing under "Helprin" in a bookstore: This story is every bit the equal of "Catch 22" in its often manic depiction of the lunacy of war, but is far more lyrical; a love song where Heller's work clearly is not. And, if "A Farewell to Arms" captured the Great War from Hemingway's uniquely American perspective, Helprin, by opting for an Italian protagonist, finds a universality that eludes Hemingway, and with prose that a century hence will continue to sing, unlike Hemingway's, which already seems stilted by comparison. Finally, I am unsure as to whether I envy those who, like my friend, are experiencing this work for the first time (but I think that I do). Newcomers likely will be torn between lingering on each page and turning to the next, as the story races to its astonishing, yet in hindsight, perfectly-crafted and satisfying end: Helprin's stone indeed has landed in the deepest part of his pool. For re-readers like me, it matters not that one knows in advance how the story ends; there is a distinct pleasure to be derived from a lingering journey that is its own reward. So, at long last, and not without solemnity, I can carefully remove those scores of page markers, needing them no longer. And thus I begin my fourth traversal of this work, this time with a sixth sense that a guiding force will keep my friend and me on the same page. While there are factors which make it an uncertain thing that we will read these pages aloud, perhaps in my meanderings I will find evidence elsewhere that this gift, like Helprin's stone, has come to rest at the right place.
|
