Winter's Tale

So it may seem like I gave up on this reading experiment and this blog, but that's not at all true. Instead, I picked up Winter's Tale, a dense 688-page book by Mark Helprin that seems to have taken me forever to finish. Before that, I attempted to read some Graham Greene, which I just couldn't get into, and I spent a little time with Stephen Leacock, of which there will be more later.

As for Winter's Tale, there were times I loved it, but unfortunately more times that I did not. Frankly, this book seems a little too mystical for my taste. I admit it. Whether it's good sense or just a lack of creativity on my part, I like my novels to be a little grounded in reality. I tend to avoid hobbits and warlocks. No hobbits or warlocks here, but there was a magical flying horse, which didn't exactly win me over. There was also time travel, which in general I enjoy, but it was weird time travel that occasionally involved the aforementioned horse flying into the clouds. No fancy time machines here, alas.

There are a large cast of characters as well, and that's part of the problem. This reminds me of why I've never really liked short stories. Honestly, it takes me a long time to get into a book. I have to read about characters for several pages before I really start caring about them. WIth short stories, the story is usually just about done before I start to give a damn about the characters. Here, Helprin jumps between characters enough that I always feel like I'm starting the book over. Major characters just disappear for 200 pages at a time, and it gets infuriating to start a new chapter only to discover that the next 40 pages will be about yet another completely new character.

I know I sound grumpy, but I'm serious that I did love parts of it. Beverly Penn really livens the novel up, and I love the parts about the newsroom. I'm not shy about giving up on a book, but here there was just enough to keep me interested. For me, it really takes off around page 400, which is an odd thing to say about a book.

Sadly, though, it peters out a bit around page 600. A lot is set up for the ending, and I can't say that the resolution was all that satisfying. I closed the book thinking, "Huh?" What's worse is that by that point I wasn't really disappointed. At no point did I expect there to be an ending that made any sense, and yet I kept reading. I suppose that says something about Helprin's talents as a novelist. In some ways, I might have been disappointed if it did all make sense at the end. A logical ending to this would have seemed completely out of place.

Jody, who liked this novel enough to read it more than once, convinced me to read this, in part, I think, because she wanted to see if I understood what the hell it was all about. (Or maybe it was just revenge for telling her about one too many baseball books.) Well, damned if I know what Winter's Tale is about. If anyone out there would like to englighten me, well, I'd love to know.