Helprin doesn’t forget that he has a tale to get on with, and he has a knack for choosing just the right tantalizing detail to make readers wonder what will happen next. He published “Freddy and Fredericka” in 2005. 6 Calendar section, a review of “In Sunlight and in Shadow” said that it was Mark Helprin’s first novel in 17 years. But just when you think “In Sunlight and in Shadow” might float away into the ether, lofted by the sheer beauty of his sentences, he brings it down to earth with a shrewd comment on the speech patterns of Catherine’s ultra-privileged social class, or a vividly specific account of the production process at the West 26th Street loft that houses Harry’s high-end leather goods business. Post-World War II Manhattan isn’t merely the backdrop for their love affair it’s a magical urban landscape of “whitening sunrises … ferries that glide across the harbor trailing smoke … bridges diamond-lit and distant.”Įven when Helprin first won acclaim three decades ago for such early works as “Ellis Island and Other Stories” and the novel “Winter’s Tale,” his penchant for providing an epiphany on nearly every page could become wearying. Indeed, prose seems too mundane a term for Helprin’s extravagant way with words and emotions as he chronicles the courtship and marriage of Army veteran Harry Copeland and heiress/actress Catherine Thomas Hale. It’s been 17 years since Mark Helprin’s last novel, “Memoir from Antproof Case,” and he’s lost none of his gift for bravura storytelling and lavish prose.
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