Winter's Tale in Around the World in 80 Books

Oct 19, 2014 Georgia Carvalho rated it liked it

Mark Helprin writes very well, and his imagery is beautiful, even so the story itself failed to capture me. Another reviewer mentioned that, saying that he is a good writer, but not a very good story teller. It was a bit like reading a clinical case for me, I was paying attention, but in a very distanced kind of way. His attempt at magical realism is alright, but nothing like some of the best examples of that genre -- e.g. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez, or Salman Rushdie Midnig ...more

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May 18, 2014 Andy Plonka rated it really liked it

Shelves: src

I have a lot of trouble following the plots of science fiction books and found this one no different. However I enjoyed it immensely. The satirical humor was so clever particularly the jibes made against politicians and politics. I was amused by what I suppose was a reference to global warming in a comment concerning New York winters becoming less severe, with virtually no snow. This was obviously written before last winter when the opposite seemed to be true.
I'm also not a fan of time travel, ...more

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May 15, 2014 Jessica rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: new-york-city, magical-realism

I really want to give this a better review than 2 stars because I know the only reason I didn't like it was that it's not to my taste. Some of descriptions of New York (both the city and the Hudson Valley) in the throes of a deep winter are lovely, but 750 pages worth of the same lush description without much of a plot to move it forward makes the book feel like an MFA project on steroids. I'll freely admit that I'm much more of a plot-and-characters type, so this just never quite took hold for ...more

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