Describe your favourite book

[autographedcat]

In my Facebook memories this morning, I came across my post a few years ago reacting¹ to the news that they were making a movie of Mark Helprin’s “Winter’s Tale”, which I have long held is my favourite novel ever. ²  One of my friends asked me what the book was about, and re-reading my reply, I’m rather pleased with it.

“It’s a story about love. It’s a story about the love of passion, the love of seasons, the love of family, and the love of place. It’s a story about justice, and transcendence, and redemption. It’s a story about seeking, and wanting, and needing. It’s a story about what changes, and what never changes, and the bridge between the two. It’s a story about magic, and reality, and about the wall of clouds that separate one from the other and then weave them together as tightly as the threads in a tapestry.

But more than anything, it’s the story of a city, and the story of a girl, and the story of a man, and the story of his horse.”

What’s your favourite book, and how would you pitch it to someone if you wanted to entice them to read it?

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1. with no small amount of trepidation, which turned out to be entirely justified ↩

2. I read it once a year at least, and have done every year since I first discovered it in 1988. ↩