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elinor_thirteen 's review for:
Winter's Tale
by Mark Helprin
wow, i can't believe i wasted two months of my life on this book! never again. when i start to feel like a book is going south and i can't connect with it anymore, i'm getting rid of it. this book is almost 800 pages long. i love giant, immersive novels and since this is supposed to be one of the best books of the 20th century, i thought i was in good hands. the NYT reviewer on the back loved this book so much he said he was afraid his review wouldn't do it justice! and i guess bc i am of a poetic temperament, i thought i'd read it during the depths of winter. anyway, the book is broken into 4 parts. part 1 is amazing, totally engaged in peter lake's story, the horse, beverly, loved it, beautiful writing, loved how he created a magical alternate version of new york, all about it. part 2 introduced new characters who have almost nothing to do with anything in book 1, ok fine, even going so far as to have some wacky mountaineering adventures in western america that feel like they fell out of a tom robbins novel (and i am not a tom robbins fan). not as excited about all this but whatever, i will trust the author. part 3 introduces a rivalry between two newspapers that is even more disconnected than all the crazy shit in book 2, getting annoyed now. part 4 even further dissolution into nonsense, no satisfying resolution of anything introduced in book one, even more new characters, the end is even a super obnoxious "and what really happened to peter lake? that's for you to decide inside your own imagination!" like i'm watching mr. roger's neighborhood, not reading a book for adults. i hated this book. there is a lot of beautiful, lyrical writing but i felt like it took all my frustrations surrounding the game of thrones series and condensed them into one book. by the last hundred pages i was skipping over tons of stuff, everything about the winter mayor vs the ermine mayor, fucking mootfowl, craig binky, so much bullshit. i have no idea why this book became so famous/well reviewed, it was magical realism at it's dumbest, minus the fabulous opening of the book, which was super engaging before the author made the bizarre choice of burying it and all it's questions, characters and ideas under like a magic sparkle puke rainbow. :(