For what can be imagined more beautiful than the sight of a perfectly just city rejoicing in justice alone.Winter's Tale is a strange and nearly uncategorisable book; seemingly a meandering meditation on both love and justice. Beginning in the Gilded Age of New York City, a master burglar meets and falls in love with the young daughter of the household he attempts to rob. She, Beverly, is dying of tuberculosis, and the pair's affair is passionate but all too brief. As the burglar, Peter, also leaves the city soon after, this love affair, the proposed centerpiece of the book, is not really the point.
These glittering early 20th century days of NYC are layered over with some alternate history: with New Jersey seen as a primitive swamp, populated with feather- and fur-wearing Baymen; mysterious and seldom-seen folks who stay one step ahead of the all-consuming cloud wall. But just when you think they (and the cloud wall) are important, they're not.
One of the most fascinating settings is the Lake of the Coheeries -- a mysteriously hidden, nearly medieval village whose inhabitants rejoice in their unspoiled surroundings year-round -- but though various main characters are able to enter and leave the village, its existence isn't really necessary to the plot of Winter's Tale.
There is plenty of magical realism -- with the near mythological white horse, time travel, and Peter's developing powers -- but as magical realism isn't usually my cuppa tea, I was not exactly entranced by these scenes. Yet still, I can't say that I didn't enjoy this book. Sentence-by-sentence, the writing was intriguing -- in a blurb on the back cover, Publishers Weekly says, "He creates tableaux of such beauty and clarity that the inner eye is stunned" -- and I have to admit that the writing was appealing to something in my subconscious mind, but these sentences (these tableaux) really didn't add up to something more. There is so much plot in this book (not just because it's 750 pages, but that so much happens) that it gets weighted down. Some sample writing:
He moved like a dancer, which is not surprising; a horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.That's from the book's opening, and I was instantly intrigued by a story starting from the perspective of a horse, and especially by this horse.
Words were all he knew; they possessed and overwhelmed him, as if they were a thousand white cats with whom he shared a one-room apartment.That's some undeniably interesting writing, but I'm left wondering, "Why are they a thousand white cats?" This is just one example of the sort of thing that would repeatedly bring me out of the narrative as I pondered the author's intent.
A paralyzing dream of absolute zero floated down from Canada and made the winter sky into a brittle blue arch.And I must comment on that: Yes, I'm certain that in the winter cold air goes down to NYC from here in Canada, and as much of Winter's Tale happens during a string of unprecedentedly cold winters, much is made of the weather, but when an author writes of this Canadian invasion repeatedly (7? 8? 9 times?) it seems like he's making a bigger point, and I didn't get it (and honestly, that's not meant to be defensive -- I like seeing even a frozen Canada in print -- but wouldn't it distractingly catch the eye if he repeatedly said that warm air had blown in from Florida? Why would any author put in a statement like that more than once? Approaching 10 times?). There are also many metaphors about thistles and stars and the golden city (only the last of which I recognise as Biblical) and if these were meant to signify something larger, they went over my head, too.
Now, as much as I don't care for magical realism, I am fascinated by the quirks (and quarks) of Quantum Mechanics and the nature of time, and this passage that seems to capture the essence of multiverses struck me just right:
Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was is; everything that ever will be, is - and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or, rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.And yet…if that's true and justice is omnipresent, then why are so many characters obsessed with creating the right conditions to bring about the just city? Ah, but in the end, in the epilogue, Mark Helprin asks his readers to find the answers in their own hearts to any lingering questions they might have. I liked reading Winter's Tale but am not sad that it is over. It was such an uneven experience: I really enjoyed the Short Tails and their ability to pop up unexpectedly, but conversely, I grew weary of Athansor appearing out of nowhere to save the day (and is there a literary or psychological theory that explains why sudden menace is thrilling and sudden salvation is not?). I also really liked the image of Peter's mastery of the steam-powered machines at The Sun and this was made doubly satisfying through the lens of time: Imagine how well-poised they would have been as the year 2000 actually approached and they were the only business not scrambling to deal with the Y2K bug. I also think that this book would have the most appeal for residents of NYC -- the city itself could be considered the main character, the novel a love letter. And as a final aside, I didn't realise that this 30 year old book had been made into a movie -- released a couple of months ago -- and honestly, I can't imagine how they filmed it. Perversely, I feel a need to seek it out because I can't believe it works as a film.
Based on a teen magazine, I asked Ella (now 10) the other day: Would you rather time travel to the future or to the past. At first she picked the future and I said, "That would be the most adventurous, for sure, but what if the future is all wars and pollution and scary stuff like that? At least if you went to the past you'd know where you were going." She thought for a second and said, "You're right. I'd go to the past, to the time when Two-Bit was still alive." As Two-Bit, the dog, has only been gone for a few months, that's not a huge leap in time, but I liked that answer. Imagine if the happiest time of your life was just a few months ago -- there's something in that about appreciating every bit of what we have in the now.
There's also something very comforting about multiverses -- imagine if everyone, or every dog, we ever loved and lost is still alive in an alternate timeline. Kyler said to me, years ago, "Do you ever think about all the times in your life when you should have died? Can you imagine if there are alternate timelines where you did die, but this one, where you and I are sitting here talking, is simply the one where we've both lived this far?" Now, I don't have that many stories about the times I could have been killed, but it was food for thought. Kyler is an Engineer, so his mind works like that, but this notion of multiverses intrigues my brain, too.
And as an added note of **spoilerish** synchronicity: I was watching Ancient Aliens last night (don't judge) and they were examining whether the Vikings were visited by extraterrestrials, based on Norse art and legends. It was proposed that perhaps the rainbow bridge (Bifröst) to Asgard was a wormhole that connected humans to the realm of their gods (the aliens who gave Thor his hammer and Odin his spear -- not Thor and Odin themselves). This was what was going through my mind as Mead, Mootfowl and Mature were attempting to erect their rainbow bridge to...where? Heaven? As it didn't work out, it wasn't made completely clear what they were attempting to accomplish, and these apparent immortals were happy enough to wait another eon before conditions aligned once more. Kinda sounds like gods (aliens?) and wormholes, eh? I'll end on another quote I liked but couldn't fit into the review itself:
If there were such a thing as archeologists of the soul, they might reconstruct all that has gone before from shame and love, two everlasting columns that rise into time though everything else is worn away.
Or as the Barenaked Ladies put it:
I live with it every day
Even though we moved away
Our yesterdays are on a loop
A marathon of heartbreaking moments
I live with it every day
For every step I have to pay
The only thing that they can't take
The guilt that spirals in my wake
If there are alternate timelines in which I died young, there are also timelines in which I didn't do the stupid things that play on my own loop of heartbreaking moments. And that, for sure, intrigues my brain.
