Reviews
Reviews
“Every once in a while a book appears that engulfs you in its limitless beauty. . . . This is such a book. Helprin’s use of language and imagery is an ineffable joy.” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).
“Refiner’s Fire is an experience, like being shot out of a cannon — exhilarating, extravagant, vertiginous.” (Margaret Manning, The Boston Globe).
“ As if the Odyssey had been updated and rewritten by Dylan Thomas.” (The Listener, London).
“Mark Helprin, who must be legend to his friends, risks more than most novelists dare in ten years. Helprin writes like a saint, plots like a demon, and has an imagination that would be felonious in all but the larger democracies . . . . The sound that drowns all others in this novel is that of kingdom-come ignition.” (The Village Voice)
“Fabulous . . . . Imagine Fielding’s Tom Jones reborn into the twentieth century with Laurence Stern as midwife.” (Harper’s Magazine)
“Marvelous . . . . A brilliantly sinuous tale that sets an Augie March-like young man into a Gabriel Garcia Marquez universe . . . There are so many things to admire in Mark Helprin’s first novel that one’s problem is where to begin.” (Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review)
“Superb. . . . A first-rate odyssey, full of insight and humor and hard-earned wondrous truths. . . That best of all possible novels: read ten pages and you can’t put it down; finish it and you’ll feel it haunt your days and nights.” (Patricia Holt, San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle)