Love, War, Despair, Redemption and the Wild Beauty of Life

It is rare that I read a book more than once, but my third book of 2008 was just such a happy accident. Halfway through the first page I realized that the characters seemed awfully familiar. Jarring the memories loose, I remembered A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin in a stack of library books in the room across from the bathroom in Hermosa. This places the time of reading at sometime before I got seriously into rock climbing and before I went to Rome. These are both topics that figure heavily in the story, but knowledge of them is hardly necessary to become completely possessed by the book. I remember it as a marathon read; I pulled all-nighters because I had to know what happened next.

This time I took nearly a month to read it. It's a great story worth savoring. While Helprin’s language is exquisite, his images vivid and gorgeous, the thing I appreciate so much about the book is its vitality. Being a war story, of course there is much death and destruction and everyone who survives suffers tremendous losses and is left deeply scarred. Yet love and lust for life continue. It’s beautiful. Really. I don't know if everybody should read it, but somebody should so I can talk about it with them.