In Sunlight and in Shadow
by:
Mark Helprin (author)
Can love and honor conquer all?Mark Helprin’s enchanting and sweeping novel springs from this deceptively simple question, and from the sight of a beautiful young woman, dressed in white, on the Staten Island Ferry, at the beginning of summer, 1946.Postwar New York glows with energy. Harry...
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Can love and honor conquer all?Mark Helprin’s enchanting and sweeping novel springs from this deceptively simple question, and from the sight of a beautiful young woman, dressed in white, on the Staten Island Ferry, at the beginning of summer, 1946.Postwar New York glows with energy. Harry Copeland, an elite paratrooper who fought behind enemy lines in Europe, has returned home to run the family business. Yet his life is upended by a single encounter with the young singer and heiress Catherine Thomas Hale, as they each fall for the other in an instant.Harry and Catherine pursue one another in a romance played out in Broadway theaters, Long Island mansions, the offices of financiers, and the haunts of gangsters. Catherine’s choice of Harry over her longtime fiancé endangers Harry’s livelihood and eventually threatens his life. In the end, it is Harry’s extraordinary wartime experience that gives him the character and means to fight for Catherine, and risk everything.Not since Winter’s Tale has Mark Helprin written such a magically inspiring saga. Entrancing in its lyricism, In Sunlight and in Shadow so powerfully draws you into New York at the dawn of the modern age that, as in a vivid dream, you will not want to leave.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780547819235 (0547819234)
ASIN: 547819234
Publish date: October 2nd 2012
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Pages no: 720
Edition language: English
Rapturous epic of the city, as magical as Helprin's great Winter's Tale even if it is not a fantasy. It is as immersive as anything ever conjured up from fairyland. 1946 New York City is the equal to Lud-in-the-Mist, Narnia, Middle Earth, Wonderland and Looking-Glass World, Gormenghast. Veteran Harr...
This is not the best Helprin novel that I have read. Supposedly a love story between Catherine Hale and Harry, the novel becomes lost in added details that really detach from the plot. The basic plot is Catherine and Harry struggles to be together, and the obstacles are not necessary the ones you th...
On one hand, the words were beautifully written and reading it was like enjoying a lovely spring day. On the other hand, it was slow and the characters were just too perfect. I think that a book like this should move me or drive me towards some insightful self reflection, but I am just glad I got ...
Gave up on it - early going was sappy romance.
In conclusion: Unfortunately, I cannot whole-heartedly recommend this book to everyone, even though I loved parts. Some of the writing is beautiful and thought provoking, but there are verbose, sentimental, overly dramatic and sophomoric passages too. Whole chapters could/should have been completely...