Synopses & Reviews
Mark Helprin's fiction is at once so effortlessly imaginative and deeply imagined as to regularly elicit from critics comparisons to Joyce, Kafka, Poe, Mann, and others. John Gardner said of Helprin, He moves from character to character and from culture to culture as if he'd been born and raised everywhere, and Reynolds Price wrote in The
New York Times Book Review, Such ambitious reach is almost unheard of in our short fiction. Helprin is indisputably one of the great writers of our time.
And now, almost ten years since his last book, Helprin returns with The Pacific and Other Stories, a collection of sixteen stories that display the remarkable scope, incomparable wit, and deft prose that have come to be his signature. A British paratrooper jumps into occupied territory in order to reconnoiter enemy positions and direct artillery fire, but a roof breaks his fall; shattered physically and fully alone, he must decide the extent of his devotion to his mission. The 1958 New York Yankess gain an unexpected teammate in a puny, teenage Hasidic Jew whom God has called to rescue the House of Ruth. An opera impresario who has made his career on and ruined the life of a laundress-turned-diva now considers whether he ought to pluck from obscurity a soprano singing on a side street in Venice. A novelist in the 1940s, completely forgotten within the vast bureaucracy at U.S. Steel, constructs for himself a lifesaving sinecure. A September 11 widow receives an astonishing gift from the contractor working on her new apartment. In 1972, a female reservist in the Israeli Army who has despaired of love finds it at the very last minute and in its finest expression, while floating in the sea off Haifa.
Helprin's stories exhibit the constantly changing variety of the ocean itself, the peaks and troughs of life depicted as they blend indistinguishably into one another. Lighthearted, glittering fables are met with starker tales that sound the depths of sacrifice and duty. And although many stories are of the present, the pre-World War II past and its promise of a simpler, purer way of life return with tidal regularity to haunt a modern-day world that has slighted tranquillity and reflection.
The Pacific and Other Stories is a resplendent, engulfing, powerful collection of lasting substance and emotional import.
Review
"Perfection exists in our world, Helprin suggests in this splendid collection, but it takes a quick eye to spot the momentary gleams. And for those who might not be quick enough, his writing preserves them, in a prose that is as glassy and smooth as amber." Los Angeles Times
Review
"The Pacific and Other Stories is rich in big, life-shaping notions (love, honor, duty, regret) filtered through the language of longing and nostalgia in such a way that the world takes on a kind of fairy-tale luster..." Washington Post
Review
"Like the contractor in Monday, Helprin is a thorough and meticulous craftsman. Like the widow's renovated co-op, the stories in The Pacific are constructed with skill and confidence, which gives them beauty." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Happily, Mark Helprin proves he has the skills to return to this classical mode and, with stories that take us around the world and back, make it feel urgent again." Seattle Times
Review
"This is a highly literate collection that showcases Helprin's wit, erudition and authentic voice." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Review
"Even in tragedy there is humor, and Helprin has exhibited the capacity for whimsy in other books. But these are wonderful stories that need to be read. Try not to read them all at once; wait for a quiet time when you can focus completely on them." Dallas-Ft. Worth Star Telegram
Review
"At times heart-wrenching and at times humorous, Helprin's stories are about living lives of integrity and the rewards of doing so....Helprin is a master of the genre." Miami Herald
Review
"Within its pages, Helprin has perfected an engaging hybrid of past and present literary styles that is truly all his own." San Antonio Express-News
Review
"Helprin reaffirms his place as our most elegant moralist... [His] range is staggering." Entertainment Weekly, Editors Choice
Review
"Helprin needs space to work his magic, room to build up steam, but even in these short bursts, he often accomplishes what others take hundreds of pages to achieve." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
A dazzling collection of short stories by Mark Helprin, bestselling author of Winter's Tale, which is now a major motion picture starring Colin Farrell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Russell Crowe, William Hurt, and Jennifer Connelly
The Pacific and Other Stories is a collection of sixteen stories that display the remarkable scope, incomparable wit, and deft prose that have come to be Mark Helprin's signature. A British paratrooper jumps into occupied territory; the 1958 New York Yankees gain an unexpected teammate in a puny, teenaged Hasidic Jew; a September 11th widow receives an astonishing gift from the contractor working on her new apartmentthese and other stories exhibit the constantly changing variety of the ocean itself, the peaks and troughs of life. Lighthearted, glittering fables are met with starker tales that sound the depths of sacrifice and duty. The Pacific and Other Stories is a resplendent, powerful collection of lasting substance and emotional import.
About the Author
Educated at Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford, Mark Helprin served in the Israeli Army, Israeli Air Force, and British Merchant Navy. He is the author of, among other titles, A Dove of the East and Other Stories, Refiner's Fire, Ellis Island and Other Stories, Winter's Tale, A Soldier of the Great War, and Memoir from Antproof Case.