Winter's Tale

This was a strange book. I haven't seen the movie but I don't think it matches up too much.

Peter Lake and Beverly Penn have a love story that is very brief. He decides to rob her house thinking it is empty and she is alone in the house but is sick with consumption or what at least seems like consumption. They fall in love and Beverly dies soon after. The book then shifts to another time and place. Lake of the Coteries is place that cannot be accessed easily. Virginia is a young mother who decides to leave there and go into the city. She arrives in NYC and has a lot of luck in getting a job at a newspaper The Sun. There is also the story of a white stallion who keeps appearing throughout the time. He seems to be immortal and helps Peter when he needs it both in the past and in the future when he suddenly appears alive with very little memory of his past life. I would love to give this 5 stars as it is very well written, but a bit too disjointed. I enjoyed the stories of each couple and finding how they connected.

This book was a drag to get through, and finally coming out the other end I'm not even certain what kind of story it was attempting to tell. There was never a point where it officially hooked me into not wanting to put it down, it just got somewhat more intriguing after 50%—which, for a book as long as this one, took forever to get to. There were several words that I had never heard of before used frequently throughout the book, so much so that I was glad to be reading an e-book copy so I could look them up. It really added to the bogged down reading experience when I had to be pausing every few paragraphs to try and understand what I was reading. I will admit that this was chosen for the prompt "Out of your comfort zone," but historical is not necessarily a genre I hate, just one I don't dive into that often.

I thought it was going to be a romance and I assumed it would follow the same person from the beginning of the book, but about a third of the way in it starts introducing new POVs and doesn't stop introducing new ones until about halfway. It introduces characters, drops them entirely, brings in new ones, drags back some old ones, and it all became very chaotic to read. I understand why it was written that way now that I'm through with the book and looking back on it, but I only had questions upon questions while I was reading, and I feel like there could've been much more concise ways to write the story.

As I'm not sure where to put these specific gripes, I'll mention them here: the romance—or rather, the original romance—is between a 30 year old man and an 18 year old girl who decide they're in love at first sight under the strangest circumstances. I also noticed that practically every single woman who is not written to be a main or large side character is described sexually in some way, or pointed out to the reader as being a sexual creature, for more than a couple lines.

At the end of it all, I still don't understand the story. This is set in New York, with everything as it should be in real life, but there are touches of magic that seem more odd and out of place than mystical and wondrous. So many people whom are the best of the best, clouds that form a wall and eat anyone who go in, unclear messages about the dead and dying, a horse that can leap a block or two or even fly, a girl who's in a perpetual fever and soon to die who has more knowledge and wisdom than anyone in the world (implied to be because of the fevers). There are 300/900+ pages without the character you're first introduced to, which feels like an insanely long amount when he's who you first assume you're learning the story of. The "magic" is never explained, the characters only decide to accept it at one point or another. In fact, most things in the plot are never explained either, only giving a modicum of a wrap up at the very end.

There were a few parts that entertained me, but they're small, so they get to go at the end. There is a lengthy scene described where a burglar is trying to burgle a home belonging to a burglar-obsessed man, and each description of the burglar trying to get in and finding himself thwarted in this way or that is incredibly funny. A train is stuck in a blizzard, and the moment of being rescued was so heartwarming that I so desperately wanted to like the rest of the book. A man and a woman are separate tenants who share an apartment wall, and they speak to each other and fall in love long before they meet, which was also incredibly cute. But all of these scenes were just that—scenes that didn't last very long, and didn't make up for the rest of it.

I'm sure this is a book for someone out there, maybe someone who wants a world to get entirely lost in for a very long time and who doesn't have a problem suspending their disbelief, but it wasn't for me.

I have no illusions that this novel isn't flawed (to say nothing of its author) but I've loved it beyond reason since the first time I read it, and every time since. The best word I have for it is “luminous”: every sentence, every character is radiant, filled with light. It's vast and grandiose and full of magic and strangeness and sentimentality, and I find new things in it with every rereading. The romances, the passions of the characters, the courage of the white horse, the visions of the city and its machines, even the beauty of winter; it all moves me deeply and seems imbued with meaning. There are parts that have always made me cry and parts that I want to read aloud to those I love the most. There are scenes I feel so vividly and so deeply that it's almost as though I experienced them myself. To me, it's a work of genuine spiritual significance.