In Sunlight and in Shadow

By: Mark Helprin

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

Length: 29 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

Mark Helprin’s enchanting and sweeping novel asks a simple question: can love and honor conquer all?

New York in 1947 glows with postwar energy. Harry Copeland, an elite paratrooper who fought behind enemy lines in Europe, returns home to run the family business. In a single, magical encounter on the Staten Island ferry, the young singer and heiress Catherine Thomas Hale falls for him instantly but too late to prevent her engagement to a much older man. Harry and Catherine pursue one another in a romance played out in postwar America’s Broadway theaters, Long Island mansions, the offices of financiers, and the haunts of gangsters. Catherine’s choice of Harry over her longtime fiancé endangers Harry’s livelihood - and eventually threatens his life.

Entrancing in its lyricism, In Sunlight and in Shadow so powerfully draws you into New York at the dawn of the modern age that, as in a vivid dream, you will not want to leave.

About the author: Mark Helprin was educated at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Oxford. He served in the Israeli military and the British Merchant Navy. He is the acclaimed author of Winter’s Tale and numerous other works.

©2012 Mark Helprin (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“In this prodigious, enfolding saga of exalted romance in corrupt, postwar New York, resplendent storyteller Helprin creates a supremely gifted and principled hero…Helprin’s suspenseful, many-stranded plot is unfailingly enthralling. The sumptuous settings are intoxicating. The novel’s seething indictment of mobster rule in the 1940s is bracing, and the lovers’ high-stakes predicaments are heartbreaking. Helprin’s personal articles of faith shape every scene as he expresses deep respect for soldiers, sensitivity to anti-Semitism and racism, and stalwart belief in valor and individual exceptionalism. So declarative is this philosophical tale that it can be read as Helprin’s spiritual and lyrical answer to the big, bossy, and enduring novels of Ayn Rand.” ( Booklist, starred review)

“Elegant, elegiac…A fine adult love story - not in the prurient sense, but in the sense of lovers elevated from smittenness to all the grownup problems that a relationship can bring.” ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

“Glorious and golden, truly like reentering another world where another sensibility prevails and even the sunlight and shadow have a different weight.” ( Library Journal)

Could not keep going

Would you try another book from Mark Helprin and/or Sean Runnette?

No. Perhaps the narrator was handicapped by the material, which was tedious and overwritten, but the combination of Helprin's diarrhea of words and Runnette's whispery earnestness was deadly.

What could Mark Helprin have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Cut out half the words and rethink the ones he kept. Can't say about the story line because after two hours of listening I'd just gotten to the boy meets girl part.

Would you be willing to try another one of Sean Runnette’s performances?

Yes, my real problem with this book was the author.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

No.

Any additional comments?

I bought this book on the recommendation of someone without noticing that it was by the same author as Fred and Frederika, another book I was unable to finish. Helprin is overly enamored by his own writing - much of which is nonsensical. When the words he has assembled do make sense, too often they are hammering the reader over the head with political or social philosophies inappropriate to the era in which the story takes place. After listening to two hours I realized In Sunlight and in Shadow is layered with pretty words and endless descriptions that give an appearance of something important, but underneath the book its pretentious drivel. And that's when I decided to turn it off.

too wordy

This author just goes on and on with his descriptions. I found my mind wandering off because of all of the unnecessary imagery.

Such Great Possibilities!

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

A different narrator and an editor with sharp scissors.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Sean Runnette?

Almost any narrator would have been an improvement. Runnette's sentences had one cadence, no inflection and he sounded like the guy on "Prairie Home Companion" who extolls the virtues of catsup. I really wanted to listen to this book because I wanted to finish it and I had a long car trip when I could listen. But I just couldn't stand to listen to this narrator.

Any additional comments?

This was a great idea for a story - a good plot line (I guess it is plausible that a humanities major would take on a mobster), and fairly well developed characters, but Helprin's digressions were so numerous and often so overblown that they just barely allowed you to suffer through them to get to the story.

It was like going for a walk with a poet in a beautiful garden. Sometimes he stops, examines a flower and writes a poem. Other times, he stops, examines a flower and smokes a joint.