It is, however, a stunning achievement, a book wonderfully, truly out of time. This is a story self-consciously told, rather than passively shown, an approach that is at odds with contemporary writing and reading, but one that fits comfortably within the novels of the 19th century.Īs one might guess from the above, In Sunlight and In Shadow is not for every reader. Helprin’s language doesn’t describe - it pronounces. Unlike virtually all contemporary fiction, Helprin writes in an omniscient third-person voice, heavy with portentousness and authority, almost a character in its own right. One sees this, for example, in the narrative voice, the bedrock of Helprin’s approach (which was savaged in a recent review in The New York Times). Rather, it’s a bold, bombastic, old-fashioned novel, the sort of shaggy beast that can - and does - go anywhere. In Sunlight and In Shadow isn’t a novel of its time there is nothing fashionable or contemporary about it whatsoever. Stepping back, however, it makes a sort of sense. Though perhaps jarring isn’t a strong enough word: willfully perverse might cover it.

The fact that the second, action-heavy half works as well as the first, romantic half doesn’t make the transition any less jarring.

This oddness sets up the prolonged final sequence of the book, and the soaring, Baroque romance suddenly becomes an action novel, less Citizen Kane, more The Dirty Dozen.

The novel takes a strange swerve at about the halfway point, however, starting with a lengthy flashback to Harry’s experiences during the war. The first half of the novel is unabashedly romantic, the lushness of Helprin’s language the appropriate music for this level of intensity: One can almost hear the soaring strings in his lengthy sentences. What it lacks in drama - the two never fight, Harry gets along well with her parents, the engagement is dealt with expeditiously - it makes up for in sheer rhapsodic intensity. The first half of In Sunlight and In Shadow chronicles Catherine and Harry’s burgeoning relationship.

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