Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book was captivating from the beginning all the way to the end. The stories of war and love manifest in the novel catch the reader and hold him or her until the very end. Helprin writes with a beautifully poetic style which helped make this book one of the best that I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: If you want to be there, read Mark Helprin
Review: Very few books that I have read have given me the opportunity to feel as if I were part of the author's mind. Mark Helprin in "A Soldier of the Great War" writes for the reader who wants not only to read a good book but for the reader who wants to be a part of the action. A very moving book and you will finish it with a perception of what war and all that goes with war is about.
Rating:
Summary: If Mr. Helprin has never been in combat, he fooled me
Review: This book, anlong with All_Quiet_On_The_Western_Front, will give the non combat veteran, a insight to the world/hell of a infantryman. This book and The_Razors_Edge, will expose you to the never ending sturgle, a vet has to reconsile his, pre-war, war, and post-war, life.
Rating:
Summary: A champion for Beauty in an age of post-modern nihilism
Review: From the first page, this work made live the visceral and spiritual experience of beauty - even in the midst of what is ugliest - in this world. Most importantly, it described the essence of the real war: the daily battle to live each day in a way that transcends this time and space with an eye toward the beauty of the life to come.
Rating:
Summary: laughing, crying, longing, wonderment, best book read
Review: The descriptions of the characters, the places, the events, are filled with humor, wonderment, fantasy. A tour through a magical Italy. The descriptions of Italy are poetic, beautiful, lyrical. The main character lives through a sad, funny, loving life. This is a book I have given as a gift to the people that I love.
Rating:
Summary: An intelligent and witty view of nature, beauty, and war
Review: Frankly, when I picked this book off the shelf, I thought I was getting a war thriller, or something. I was taken from the beginning, however by the character of Alessandro, his view of the world, and his various adventures. I measure a book's worth by how many passages I take the time to underline and review later, and this one sets a record for me. I wanted it to go on and on, like a Fellini movie, and was sad when it ended. Everything works in this book, and even the allegorical characters (i.e., Orfeo) are tolerable. This is not a book for casual readers, and you must expect to "do a little work" in getting to the essence, but it is well worth it.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best - if not THE best - books I've ever read!
Review: After scrolling through endless "10"s, eloquently written, it's hard to know what to add to the accolades heaped upon this novel by your readers, but I'll try!
Mark Helprin has written the 'perfect' book! This novel has everything - philosophy, adventure, great drama, pathos and tragedy, surrealism (of the John Irving type), comedy, romance, art history, riveting characterization, imaginative plotting and structure, and evocative writing.
As an English and history teacher, with a grim fascination for the horror that was WWI, I was astounded by the brilliance of having the main character, a student of aesthetics, confronting the ugliness of the war. This novel just worked for me. The sweep of the character's wanderings, from the Italian Alps, to the dusty hills of Sicily; from the catacombs of Rome to the back streets of Venice, are especially appealing to those who have visited Italy. There are scenes that are seared into my mind - like the one in the Carrera marble quarry, where the marble that once supplied the great Renaissance masters now supplies gravestones for a million dead Italian soldiers.
This novel inspired me to go to Venice to view "La Tempesta" myself. It's that kind of book. Read it. You WON"T be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: One of the great novels of the 20th Century
Review: I have been a student of the fascinating, senseless, apocalyptic Great War for the past three years and I thank God that I serendipitously found this book on a bookshelf at a beach house a few years ago. It now holds the most prideful position on my shelf. Helprin's writing is beautiful and poignant like a haunting Beethoven melody or a Monet canvas. The story is so powerful and filled with so many penetrating insights that one finds oneself re-reading sentences or whole paragraphs immediately after finishing them. The ending is like no other (I know that sounds trite, but I'm not Helprin). I wanted to cry but I was too breathless, overwhelmed and in awe. "Soldier of the Great War" should be required reading in a 2Oth Century Literature course, and will some great director PLEASE buy the rights and make it into a movie--just don't screw it up.
Rating:
Summary: An ambitious, powerful, and enormously interesting novel
Review: I admire Helprin, but cannot say that I enjoyed A Winter's Tale -- its fantasy kept distracting me. So I picked up A Soldier of the Great War with some reservations which made the book all the more satisfying because it so differed from my expectation. I have never had a novel hit me so hard emotionally while amusing me, making me think, and impressing me with the quality of writing. There is an element of Catch 22 in this, but Helprin's world is much richer. Readers who have not been in military service may question the realism of the bizarre war scenes, but I felt that virtually everything conformed to understandable human patterns. It would be hard to satirize the insanity of war. Helprin's ability to create fascinating and vivid characters is extraordinary. Only Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy measures up as a comparably strong -- but tremendously different -- novel. I loved A Soldier of the Great War and will now read Helprin's other work with more confidence and enthusiasm.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic! Perhaps the best book I have ever read.
Review: This book reminded me of the value of the oral tradition and the great art of storytelling. In the age of the sound bite, in a world preoccupied with the big bang, it was so enjoyable to disappear into the pages of this book and let the story slowly unfold-- to laugh out loud, to flip the pages in anticipation, to ache with a real sense of love and loss. I received "A Soldier of the Great War" as a gift several years ago and waited a long time before reading it. Since then I've given it as a gift to a few select friends who share a genuine love for the art of the story and are capable of appreciating its outstanding quality.
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