cover image Winter's Tale

Winter's Tale

Mark Helprin, , read by Oliver Wyman. . BBC Audiobooks America, $49.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-1-60283-344-9

Issued on audio for the first time to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its publication, this version of Helprin's classic novel is a huge disappointment. Helprin's book is one of the great works of American fiction of the last quarter-century and a classic New York novel, but Oliver Wyman reads it as if it were a bedtime story for children. Playing up the whimsy of Helprin's urban fantasy, Wyman entirely misunderstands the nature of the book, which is more philosophical than fanciful, and with a sense of imagination not childish but deeply adult. Not grasping these facts, Wyman treats the book as a New York “Harry Potter,” and the result is a mess unworthy of this great book. A Harvest Books paperback. (Apr.)