A Soldier Of The Great War

“A Soldier of the Great War” is not a perfect book. It has flaws. But it is a beautiful book about beautiful things (love, art, friendship, family, life, etc.). This novel celebrates and explicates what is beauty. The aesthetics of the good things in this world. It sounds heady, at times it is, but this text is a thing of beauty itself.This long novel is the story of Alessandro Giuliani, a Roman, and covers his life in the first half of the 20th century, with most emphasis on his early life and his years in the Italian Army in WW I. Alessandro tells the story of his life to a young man who he finds himself walking with for a few days. The frame story begins and ends with this walk/conversation between Alessandro and this young man (Nicolo).The book, which starts out a little didactically I found to be engaging and unexpectedly very funny at times. Of great enjoyment to me was the dry humor that the author (Mark Helprin) endows the novel’s protagonist with. Alessandro’s witty retorts and wry observations pop up in the most unexpected, and oddly appropriate, moments.This is a long book, so I’ll share some moments that I liked. There are many to choose from…I greatly enjoyed the chapter “Stella Maris” which boast some grand and profound philosophical and theological musings, powerful for their simplicity and joy in the divine and the ways in which it manifests itself in this world. The melancholy tone of this chapter is ringed with splendor.The above chapter also has a character take down the socialist ideology in one of the best efforts I have seen in fiction or nonfiction. Consider this exchange between two characters-“Since its beginning the world has seen empires, theocracies, slave states, anarchy, feudalism, capitalism, revolutionary states, and everything else you can think of, and no matter what the variation, the bloodstained stakes, guillotines, and killing grounds remain.”“Scientific socialism will make it otherwise.”“Scientific socialism will make the killing scientific and socialistic”, Alessandro replied.“True, it may be necessary initially to liquidate opponents of the revolution”, Ludovico admitted.“Yes, I know. The stakes do come in handy. It’s why no one ever takes them down.”“You commit a great evil” Ludovico declared “By abandoning belief in the perfectibility of man in favor of dreams of the heavenly city and of a God that cannot be proved.”“The heavenly city in which I believe Ludovico, cannot be demonstrated. It is a matter of faith and revelation, not reason. You, however, claim that your heavenly city is demonstrable, and, of course, it isn’t.”Later on in the book Alessandro worries about Italy post WW I, “Alessandro feared that fascists would flirt with the Left, that rather than destroy one another, they would combine…” And sadly, I fear the same today.When I read this passage my heart soared, as it is one of my passions, seeing people in the past as humans and as products of their time, not ours! “It’s simple. You can do something just, and that is to remember them. Remember them. To think of them in their flesh, not as abstractions. To make no generalizations of war or peace that override their souls. To draw no lessons of history on their behalf. Their history is over. Remember them, just remember them-in their millions-for they were not history, they were only men, women, and children. Recall them, if you can, with affection, and recall them, if you can, with love. That is all you need to do in regard to them, and all they ask.” When you realize that in one generation this applies to you, it should make you a lot less judgmental of those who came before us.Overall this novel is a mix of a good story that has moments of literary beauty and philosophical musings interlaced in a seamless blend. These elements serve each other and create an enchanting whole. In “A Soldier of the Great War” if one of those features was missing the novel would not seem complete, so well do they complement each other.At the novel’s end someone observes about a baby, “All his heart had been in his cry, and then he had had peace.” Sounds like a great way to describe a life to me.This is my first Mark Helprin novel. It will not be my last. His is too great a talent to ignore.

The obvious: The book is long (so is this review!). The length, however, captures a full life and leads us away from mere surface into depth. This book goes beyond a linear war/love plot and lays out intertwined puzzlements of life, including politics, culture, and relationships.I'm reminded of Princess Bride's Inigo Montoya, captured memorably by actor Mandy Patinkin: "Let me 'splain. No no, it is too long. Let me sum up." Author Helprin both explains and sums up. In his sketches of people across places and time, he skips and sums up, but he also takes the time and pages to explain. In both strategies he welcomes readers into the intimacy of puzzlements. Life, war or no, can be fearful and demanding. Helprin gives us a WW1 orbit, seen through the lenses of Italian and European thought and experience, and he shows and tells vividly how some good people thrive..Like other readers I lost patience with copious details of carabiners and climbing, endless Rome landscapes and cloud colorations. I wasn’t especially drawn either into the mystery of the Giorgio La Tempesta painting in Venice (new to me)—but the painting and the informative museum guard in Venice provided a nifty plot device, the first big clue for Alessandro to trace the still-living Ariana. I’m tolerate of Helprin’s precise big-word vocabulary, and while exaggerated improbabilities can wear thin, overall I liked the madcap rides, the narrow escapes, and lucky guesses.I suppose De gustibus non disputandem est applies. I myself loved Alessandro's rebuilding of the telephone (I’m a licensed ham radio gal), the swimming feats, and the logic, philosophy, and rhetoric fly-bys because I know of those. The narrative is rich enough to welcome diverse readers interacting according to distinct tastes. Alessandro likens beauty to the artistic technique "intarsia," such as complex marquetry or colorful yarns, seen together vibrantly as a whole. Here are a few themes, threads, reactions, and good writing bits, teased from the whole:1. Believable, sympathetic depictions of neighbors/friends/diverse compatriots.2. Crisply drawn interactions of young/older characters, with (of course) fleshing out of male soldiers but also profiling believable, spicy women. (I loved the witty, self-possessed travel agent Irishwoman on the train.)3. Impressive details of physical stamina (swimming, walking, climbing!)--inspirational.4. Unwrapping how those in power manipulate systems and each other, for ill and good.5. The "Great War" of the title cuts at least two ways: yes WW1, but also the living of a life anytime leads to many skirmishes and battles. Alessandro, walking with young Nicolo, describes and models weapons of reasoning things out wisely.6. Sensitive, up-close description of sex and love: youthful infatuation, raucous or quiet mature sex, the depths of loving.7. My favorite: this book uses humor well and impishly delights and instructs us with irony.Alessandro aims for virtues, among them Truth—both beautiful and useful. But life’s puzzles are neither easily nor obviously solved. Early in the narrative, old man Alessandro on a rural trolley thinks fast and invents a white lie to right a wrong. After the driver rudely ignored a young man racing to board (Nicolo), Alessandro outrageously insists he himself owns the fields and wants to inspect them, so the driver will stop. Alessandro becomes a savvy Trickster to cope with a fractured world. Such resilient imagination and trickery is seen at work, ironically, in the crazy, bad-guy bureaucrat Orfeo who thinks he is righting wrongs. A similar over-the-top trickery comes into play with the unnervingly savvy general who ignores literal combat details and manufactures false cavalry narratives for a pacifist good. As the love story of Ariana and Alessandro resolves, Helprin doesn’t allow us to wallow long in a "satisfying ending.” I believe Helprin stimulates readers to step out beyond the memorable story, like he pushed Nicolo onward, to work creatively in dealing with our own “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”8. A reservation: The "Christian" identification of characters falls flat for me. People in Alessandro’s world act and talk more as secular humanists or deists. Yes, priests and the Pope do make positive appearances. Alessandro has Christlike "suffering servant” qualities. But the book provides little insight into the distinctive way Christian faith and communities might shape daily lives.I bought the book upon recommendation by Jake Novak, financial and political analyst, who sees it as an underappreciated gem. I'm grateful. Reading on Kindle aids with moving back and forth and highlighting. Some annoying typos do mar the text.Bottom Line: This book held my interest and keeps me reflecting on its means, methods, and messages.

Mark Helprin, with the exception of Freddy and Fredericka, is one of those amazing writers most people don't know about.I was introduced to him by an American academic and have now read all his novels.It's wonderful. A love story, a story of friendship a story of the war in the Alps. The characters are amazing, the prose is luminous.Try it you will not be disappointed.

I loved this book the first time around and thought so much of it that I gave my copy to someone else but I wanted to still have a copy in my library. It is a keeper and I don't keep many books at all. Really worth a go. Grateful to the book company that sold me a copy in very good condition for a fantastic price. Thanks

Very pleased with my purchase

Good stuff

It's difficult to express the wonder of an Italian reader while listening, not reading, to this novel. It a flow of emotions as they would actually flow from an Italian high culture man of last century, and nevertheless so actual. There's nothing Anglo-Saxon in it, just Italy. The fact the author is American is a kind of miracle and testifies the quality of the writer and researcher. The plot and the character are far from ordinary as well as the complexity, but not annoying, descriptions of emotions, situations, nature and art. Alessandro's search of a meaning for life and human behavior is full of religious "taste" but valid for any believer and also agnostic/atheist. It's life and love celebration, taking all events and facts in account, as they are. A lesson of life for the young and a portrait of life for the old. So good. For me one of the greatest novel I've ever read. PS Just an error in the Italian sentences used in the novel... Not important.