In Sunlight and in Shadow
Mark Helprin
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There are certain moments, certain rare instances in our lives – we all know – that open a portal into a vulnerable realm of a more deeply-felt human experience. If we could, we would suspend time’s flow to remain in place, held invisibly by an emotional anchor, to the magic of the moment.

Many such magical moments await the reader of Mark Helprin’s latest novel, just recently released in paperback. Once again, the award-winning writer has crafted a story of such compelling literary force that the heart is left tender and sore from constantly being touched, prodded, penetrated, wounded and uplifted.

In Sunlight and in Shadow is a grand narrative arc that sweeps majestically across time, place, emotion, intellect, villainy and heroism. The story is a ship that sails into the deep waters of the author’s thoughts and reflections on the eternal, uncompromising values of human life that he so fiercely cherishes and so publicly champions: responsibility, self-sacrifice, courage, honesty, generosity, beauty and love. Readers familiar with Helprin’s novels and short stories will know that he has dedicated his literary career to the restatement and reinforcement of these values.

In his latest novel, Helprin writes of Harry Copeland, who returns in 1946 to his home in New York City after having fought in an elite paratroop unit in Europe in World War II. He returns to run the family business founded by his father. His father died while Harry was in Europe; his mother had died before he left. But malevolent forces have injected themselves into his beloved city while Harry was overseas and are now intent on harming him and the business. Harry must devise a method of foiling them. He must do so to secure his family business, to affirm the sense of justice for which he fought in Europe and to protect the woman with whom he has fallen in love.

Catherine Hale is a singer of extraordinary, near metaphysical power. She is a remarkable individual of vast grace, independence, and strength of character. She happens also to be very beautiful. Harry is swept up like a sheet of paper in a gale wind by the overwhelming emotion he feels at the first sight of her. Few writers today can write the scene the way Helprin does. It appears very early in the story.

“She walked with her back so straight and her head held so high that it was as if she had studied for years to be a dancer…She was a flow of colour. Her hair trapped the sun and seemed to radiate light. It moved in the wind at the nape of her neck and where it had come loose, but was otherwise gloriously up in a way that suggested self-possession and formality and yet also exposed most informally the beauty of her shoulders. She wore a blouse with a low collar that even across the gap he could see was embroidered in pearl on white and the glow of the blouse came not only from its nearly transparent linen but from the woman herself…

“She carried nothing, not a newspaper or a purse, and the way she walked was so beautiful that an angry man berated Harry for stopping on the ramp where he was oblivious of everything on account of a woman who then vanished, and left him as if struck by a blow…He had long known that to see a woman like this across the floor in receptions or gatherings is as arresting as if a full moon were rising within the walls of the room, but this was more arresting yet…

“[He] remembered at last to breathe and to walk, and the breath came in two beats, one of astonishment and the other of love, although what right had he to love the brief sight of a woman in white who had crossed a crowded deck and disappeared in shadow?”

Over the course of the nearly 700 pages that follow, Helprin tells us the dramatically spellbinding story of Harry and Catherine. In doing so, he introduces a rich, colourful roster of other characters that fills out the wide, finely crafted parameters of the narrative.

There are times we almost ache with wonder at the sheer cutting truth of Helprin’s writing. We read, re-read and then read yet again some of his insights and observations. His descriptive powers rise far above most writers. We are moved by Helprin’s recurring, paramount aim – reiterated in all his works of fiction  – to give heft and meaning to the dignity of the “ordinary” human beings who labour honestly and long for family and community, who dutifully remember those who have come before, and who courageously strive to be good and decent people.

Helprin’s body of work is diverse. Fiction is not his only fare. He writes prodigiously on esthetics, military strategy, defence planning and politics, to name a few of his interests. His numerous scholarly appointments include senior fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy. He has also served in the British Merchant Navy, the Israeli infantry and the Israeli Air Force.

Helprin is uncategorizable as a writer. He describes himself as belonging “to no literary school, movement, tendency, or trend.” His career is eloquent proof of that proposition.

In explaining the genesis of In Sunlight and in Shadow, Helprin said he wrote the book as “a love song for my family, and because I wanted to go back to what I remember first and best. To do so, it was necessary to set the scene in the hope that it would come alive.” We can happily report that Helprin has fully realized this hope.

Indeed, it is we – the readers – who come alive: tingling, energized, amused, entertained, moved, informed, educated, saddened, gladdened, even exhausted by the insights and emotions that Helprin evokes. In effect, he urges us to try to live our lives intensely where soul finds purpose in the deepest chambers of our heart.

In Sunlight and in Shadow is one of the best novels I have ever read.