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kerrywyler's review against another edition
5.0
Spectacularly good stories. I had never read anything by this author, but I will definitely be reading more. It took me a long time to finish it because these short stories deserve to be thoroughly digested. You won't be able to read "Monday" and somehow immediately skip to the next story.
Helprin's prose is piercingly beautiful. His writing sometimes often brings to mind Somerset Maugham. Highly recommend.
Helprin's prose is piercingly beautiful. His writing sometimes often brings to mind Somerset Maugham. Highly recommend.
bill_flanagan's review against another edition
4.0
Very enjoyable. These stories re-introduced me to the tender heart within Mark Helprin's voice. I've immensely enjoyed several of his earlier novels -- especially "Refiner's Fire", "A Soldier of the Great War", and "Memoir From Antproof Case" -- but have struggled with his two most recent novels. The short stories in this collection reminded me of his best work, the way he can write paragraph-length sentences that wander off and back again while still making sense, his eye for descriptive detail that sometimes seems to go on a bit too long but then you realize he is painting with words, as if there were a way to look directly at the sun by describing the glow of early light reflecting from myriad surfaces. Several of the stories have left indelible impressions on me, such that I don't think I'll ever forget their imagery.
guinness74's review against another edition
5.0
This is a collection of stories that are beautiful, tragic, blissful, and melancholy. They are told in a way that you might guess the ending, or you might be surprised at the turn. But the most important part is that they are written with a love of language, a decoration of words that is not superfluous or overwrought. Helprin simply casts his tales with a formidable understanding of how language creates scenes, creates memories, and creates value that transcends most stories. These are a joy to read even when they deal with subject matter that you’d never expect to be joyful.
piratequeen's review against another edition
5.0
Loved it, loved it, loved it. Helprin continues to blow my mind and rock my world with his beautiful writing and marvelous ability to set a scene. I loved all of the stories in this book, but my favorites were "The Pacific", "Monday", "Last Tea with the Armorers", and "A Brilliant Idea and His Own". I can't recommend Helprin enough, and his short stories are great, because you can get the full flavor of his writing without having to dive into one of his rather long novels.
enoughgaiety's review against another edition
1.0
First off: I hate politicizing literature. But sometimes it's inescapable.
It took me weeks to slog through this, and here's why: Helprin is so full of shit we'd mistake him for a latrine if he were painted white and dropped on a campground. Maybe I'm just falling into the same wrongheaded liberal trap that he accuses many of his reviewers of wallowing in, but this book feels--if not explicitly political--like an implicit piece of cultural commentary. It's a old-time conservative's wet dream: honor-obsessed (masculine) men and (unconventionally beautiful) women uncorrupted by the softening influence of civilization, struggling against incredible odds and attaining their own private glory in the face of (modernized, industrialized, cynical, cosmopolitan) society's scorn.
What really struck me was that Helprin likes to write about soldiers and ex-soldiers... and yet, despite the fact that this book was published in 2004, it never once mentions Vietnam or Korea, much less the US's current war. All of his wartime stories are set in the world wars, where idealistic delusions are still possible. (Marginally. Maybe.) Helprin's a romantic, both substantively and stylistically, and it really isn't endearing at all in this context.
So thumbs down, Mr. Helprin. Knowing your fiction, I can finally hate you without reservation for all of your sanctimonious cultural criticism, too.
It took me weeks to slog through this, and here's why: Helprin is so full of shit we'd mistake him for a latrine if he were painted white and dropped on a campground. Maybe I'm just falling into the same wrongheaded liberal trap that he accuses many of his reviewers of wallowing in, but this book feels--if not explicitly political--like an implicit piece of cultural commentary. It's a old-time conservative's wet dream: honor-obsessed (masculine) men and (unconventionally beautiful) women uncorrupted by the softening influence of civilization, struggling against incredible odds and attaining their own private glory in the face of (modernized, industrialized, cynical, cosmopolitan) society's scorn.
What really struck me was that Helprin likes to write about soldiers and ex-soldiers... and yet, despite the fact that this book was published in 2004, it never once mentions Vietnam or Korea, much less the US's current war. All of his wartime stories are set in the world wars, where idealistic delusions are still possible. (Marginally. Maybe.) Helprin's a romantic, both substantively and stylistically, and it really isn't endearing at all in this context.
So thumbs down, Mr. Helprin. Knowing your fiction, I can finally hate you without reservation for all of your sanctimonious cultural criticism, too.
kikiandarrowsfishshelf's review against another edition
4.0
This is a pretty mixed bag, I must say. I couldn't finish some of the stories, but others just broke my heart they were so powerful. The determining factor - I don't really like baseball, but I love the story about baseball in this collection.
Most of the stories, the best ones, deal with lost and finding hope in the lost. Those that are good are very powerful. Others, not so much.
Most of the stories, the best ones, deal with lost and finding hope in the lost. Those that are good are very powerful. Others, not so much.
michaelstearns's review
1.0
[Abandoned as of 3/30/09:]
I've read six of the sixteen stories here, and can go no further: Good God, but the man overwrites. His work has always suffered from a sentimental, self-consciously "literary" quality—he does love to wax on about the light, and about notions of honor, and he never settles for ten words where two hundred might be shoe-horned into a story. And, aside from the first 200 or so pages of Winter's Tale, he's always proven to be pretty much witless (in the sense of not being able to pull off humor; exhibit A: Memoir from Ant-Proof Case).
All of the above is bad enough, but he is so beholden to a pre-war-era sensibility that he is unable to write a convincing woman, or a man who is more complex than a bundle of virtues lashed together by sanctimonious observations of the light, the sea, the duress of combat, ad nauseam.
Reviewers below and in the trades have heaped praise upon this collection (some of it so carefully worded as to raise suspicion), but I wonder if anyone has pointed out how flaccid and self-indulgent a writer Helprin has become. It's easy to see that The Pacific is by the same writer as the earlier, superb Ellis Island and Other Stories, or even the better pieces in A Dove of the East. But those stories show a now-absent control and concision. What a pity.
I've read six of the sixteen stories here, and can go no further: Good God, but the man overwrites. His work has always suffered from a sentimental, self-consciously "literary" quality—he does love to wax on about the light, and about notions of honor, and he never settles for ten words where two hundred might be shoe-horned into a story. And, aside from the first 200 or so pages of Winter's Tale, he's always proven to be pretty much witless (in the sense of not being able to pull off humor; exhibit A: Memoir from Ant-Proof Case).
All of the above is bad enough, but he is so beholden to a pre-war-era sensibility that he is unable to write a convincing woman, or a man who is more complex than a bundle of virtues lashed together by sanctimonious observations of the light, the sea, the duress of combat, ad nauseam.
Reviewers below and in the trades have heaped praise upon this collection (some of it so carefully worded as to raise suspicion), but I wonder if anyone has pointed out how flaccid and self-indulgent a writer Helprin has become. It's easy to see that The Pacific is by the same writer as the earlier, superb Ellis Island and Other Stories, or even the better pieces in A Dove of the East. But those stories show a now-absent control and concision. What a pity.
piratequeen's review
5.0
Loved it, loved it, loved it. Helprin continues to blow my mind and rock my world with his beautiful writing and marvelous ability to set a scene. I loved all of the stories in this book, but my favorites were "The Pacific", "Monday", "Last Tea with the Armorers", and "A Brilliant Idea and His Own". I can't recommend Helprin enough, and his short stories are great, because you can get the full flavor of his writing without having to dive into one of his rather long novels.
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