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Refiners Fire
Marshall Pearl is orphaned at birth on an immigrant ship off the coast of Palestine in 1947, then brought to americanca. His experiences take him from the Hudson River Valley, to Harvard, to sea on a British merchant ship, then finally back to his birthplace, where he serves as an Israeli soldier in the Yom Kippur War. “Superb...A first-rate odyssey, full of insight and humor and hard-earned truths” (San Francisco Chronicle).
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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July 2, 2024
“By God, I’m not down yet.”
You finish a Mark Helprin book, and you bask in the beauty of what you've just read. REFINER’S FIRE is a novel that is uplifting and examines the beauty in an ugly world. You read Mark Helprin and you bask in his incredible command of language, and the way he wrestles gorgeousness from the English tongue.
This is my second Mark Helprin book, and I will be a Mark Helprin completist. All of his books are sitting on my “to read” pile. And I look forward to devouring all of them.
In REFINER’S FIRE we follow the life of Marshall Pearl, a man born on the sea, the child of someone fleeing war and pain, a man who starts life as a foundling. Starting in 1947 on a ship off the coast of Palestine and ending in 1973 in Haifa Israel, we see the first half of Marshall's life. And what a life it is. Marshall’s life takes him from coast to coast in the United States, with stops in Jamaica, Mexico, the Alps, and in the English Merchant Navy. This is an adventure story, a story of one’s maturation, a love story, a semi history of a time in the world, and much more. Helprin has a gift for taking the implausible, and through his mix of satire, humor, and truth of humanity he mixes a fantastical and yet entirely believable story that the reader buys into.
One of my favorite things about REFINER'S FIRE is that this book contains nuggets of satire that just explode off the page, unexpected and pointed, and then disappear just as quickly. At one point, while some characters imagine themselves “revolutionaries”, the reader is treated to this gem of a line, “And besides, most revolutionaries from good universities become effete, epicene, whining, hermaphroditic muffins, fit only to write for the ‘New York Review of Books’”. Helprin wrote that line in 1977. He could have written that biting satire today! There are moments like that strewn throughout this novel.
At one point in the story our protagonist extols some virtues to be had in the Code of Hammurabi. It is through the conversation that ensues where Mr. Helprin makes some brilliantly sensible points in a manner that few authors can master.
Quotes:
• “A country in war is a country alive. It hurts all the time and is full of sorrow, but is as alive as the blaze of a fire, as energetic and restless as an animal in its pen-full of sex and desires of the heart.”
• “He could not restrain himself from consideration of that which was feasible mainly in the magical world and, strangely enough, sometimes in this one.”
• “Know the elements, order them with love, and thereby know the great matter of things.”
• “The silence vanished and natural laws which had withstood all assaults appeared once again as ultimate guides, as they had been in the beginning and will always be-lines along which shattering can make itself whole.”
• “But I detest those who would destroy.”
• “Although the weak don’t know this, when you have power you have to protect yourself from it.”
• “He could not go backward, and did not try.”
• “Of what use is this or that knowledge of this earth, if by our Faith it is not enhanced?”
• “He was not against change if it were to perfect rather than replace.”
• “It was not the first time that love had arisen from nowhere and given him strength, sustenance, and peace.”
• “…there is little more exquisite and taxing than devotion to a lost love.”
• “Now go and learn, and when you come back, you will learn more.”
• “The only advantage they have is that they’re immoral. That’s a short-term advantage.”
• “Those who have compassion only for criminals are compassionless, and themselves criminal.”
• “They touched and it was like breathing again.”
• “The room was filled with the unsaid.”
One of the most fascinating things about REFINER’S FIRE is how relevant it is to the here and now in mid-2024. Uncannily so. Almost 50 years old and yet the human truth of this book still breathes most powerfully!
At times fantastical, but always insightful and lovely, what Mark Helprin does in this book surrounds the reader. It envelopes you and you surrender to its beauty. Helprin celebrates that most basic of elements in our world. As one character says in this elegant novel, “The special thing was that life came back.”
You finish a Mark Helprin book, and you bask in the beauty of what you've just read. REFINER’S FIRE is a novel that is uplifting and examines the beauty in an ugly world. You read Mark Helprin and you bask in his incredible command of language, and the way he wrestles gorgeousness from the English tongue.
This is my second Mark Helprin book, and I will be a Mark Helprin completist. All of his books are sitting on my “to read” pile. And I look forward to devouring all of them.
In REFINER’S FIRE we follow the life of Marshall Pearl, a man born on the sea, the child of someone fleeing war and pain, a man who starts life as a foundling. Starting in 1947 on a ship off the coast of Palestine and ending in 1973 in Haifa Israel, we see the first half of Marshall's life. And what a life it is. Marshall’s life takes him from coast to coast in the United States, with stops in Jamaica, Mexico, the Alps, and in the English Merchant Navy. This is an adventure story, a story of one’s maturation, a love story, a semi history of a time in the world, and much more. Helprin has a gift for taking the implausible, and through his mix of satire, humor, and truth of humanity he mixes a fantastical and yet entirely believable story that the reader buys into.
One of my favorite things about REFINER'S FIRE is that this book contains nuggets of satire that just explode off the page, unexpected and pointed, and then disappear just as quickly. At one point, while some characters imagine themselves “revolutionaries”, the reader is treated to this gem of a line, “And besides, most revolutionaries from good universities become effete, epicene, whining, hermaphroditic muffins, fit only to write for the ‘New York Review of Books’”. Helprin wrote that line in 1977. He could have written that biting satire today! There are moments like that strewn throughout this novel.
At one point in the story our protagonist extols some virtues to be had in the Code of Hammurabi. It is through the conversation that ensues where Mr. Helprin makes some brilliantly sensible points in a manner that few authors can master.
Quotes:
• “A country in war is a country alive. It hurts all the time and is full of sorrow, but is as alive as the blaze of a fire, as energetic and restless as an animal in its pen-full of sex and desires of the heart.”
• “He could not restrain himself from consideration of that which was feasible mainly in the magical world and, strangely enough, sometimes in this one.”
• “Know the elements, order them with love, and thereby know the great matter of things.”
• “The silence vanished and natural laws which had withstood all assaults appeared once again as ultimate guides, as they had been in the beginning and will always be-lines along which shattering can make itself whole.”
• “But I detest those who would destroy.”
• “Although the weak don’t know this, when you have power you have to protect yourself from it.”
• “He could not go backward, and did not try.”
• “Of what use is this or that knowledge of this earth, if by our Faith it is not enhanced?”
• “He was not against change if it were to perfect rather than replace.”
• “It was not the first time that love had arisen from nowhere and given him strength, sustenance, and peace.”
• “…there is little more exquisite and taxing than devotion to a lost love.”
• “Now go and learn, and when you come back, you will learn more.”
• “The only advantage they have is that they’re immoral. That’s a short-term advantage.”
• “Those who have compassion only for criminals are compassionless, and themselves criminal.”
• “They touched and it was like breathing again.”
• “The room was filled with the unsaid.”
One of the most fascinating things about REFINER’S FIRE is how relevant it is to the here and now in mid-2024. Uncannily so. Almost 50 years old and yet the human truth of this book still breathes most powerfully!
At times fantastical, but always insightful and lovely, what Mark Helprin does in this book surrounds the reader. It envelopes you and you surrender to its beauty. Helprin celebrates that most basic of elements in our world. As one character says in this elegant novel, “The special thing was that life came back.”
May 10, 2016
There’s a reason I never heard of this book before my Goodreads friend, Sabah, reviewed it. I was in Israel the year it was published, living on a kibbutz, collecting eggs in a henhouse, with no English newspaper, and one solitary payphone to service thirty people.
I am in awe of Mark Helprin’s power with words. Oh, can he write. He makes sentences dance the way chimes move in an evening breeze, with music, in an order unexpected and always new. This is the best depiction of living in the state of Israel that I have ever read, and, I suspect, the best ever written in the English language.
The book opens with two heart-stopping passages. The first is a lyrical and gripping account of a badly-wounded soldier at the time of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. For a few days, it was uncertain whether Israel would still exist at the end of it. After the Six Day War, the government and army grew overconfident, and was consequently unprepared for the attack. I was just a little girl, but I remember rumors of graves being dug in public parks to bury all the dead.
The second passage was in equal parts gorgeous and exhilarating. Holocaust survivors of all stripes are being piloted on a crappy old boat from Europe to the British-ruled land of Israel. Over the course of their journey, the living remnants of entire families, entire villages, beaten down by unprecedented savagery, are slowly transformed into wily fighters. During the ensuing battle with a British ship determined to stop them, a child is born, and immediately orphaned.
The central section of the book is a series of wild adventure tales that this child, Marshall Pearl, goes on to experience. It might interest readers to know that the adventures are largely autobiographical, for Mark Helprin has lived one hell of an interesting life. Still, many of them could be lifted from this very long book, interchanged, rearranged, or cut out entirely, and it would make no difference to the plot. They’re exciting, and there are beautiful touches of of magical realism, but truthfully, many of these episodes don’t drive the story forward, they are merely fun to read.
But it is the last section of the book that left me gasping. Marshall enlists in the Israeli army, in the year before the Yom Kippur War, and it is so blindingly clear that Helprin actually did this that it brought tears to my eyes. Here is the Israel I know, the land that took in Germans and French and Czechoslovakians and Hungarians and Romanians and Poles and Russians and Azerbaijanians and Yemenites and Moroccans and Egyptians and Tunisians and Algerians and Indians and Ethiopians and bound them into one people.
With fondness, humor and precision, Helprin describes his unit in the army, made up of criminals and the insane, the strenuous and endless kitchen duty they were assigned, the casual way officers and enlisted men interact with one another, the exhausting and mind-numbing hikes. I laughed until I couldn’t breathe, remembering my year on kibbutz, where I, too, could curse like a sailor at my boss, and he would look at me in a puzzled way and ask me to repeat it in Hebrew; I, too, only understood names, pronouns and numbers in the course of long, rambling speeches given in Ivrit. Helprin describes the streets and the desert and the air and the wadis and the hills and the houses and the foods and the cafes and the smells and the marketplaces. He describes what it feels like to be a Jew living in a small sliver of land surrounded on all sides by enemies. He describes what it feels like to be a soldier charged with defending that land. He describes the gorgeous multicolored and multicultural quilt that is the people and the culture. And the land itself...what it does to people...well, he knows. For better or for worse, there’s a different gravitational pull there; it draws out people’s passions and faith and zeal.
It took me five or six weekends to get through this long, dense book packed with vivid, glorious language, but I flew through the last section, the one titled “Refiner’s Fire.” It ends with a heart-pounding tank battle that defined Israel’s narrow, knife-edge victory, paying tribute to the astounding, selfless courage of people fighting for their homeland, and it feels like it was written by someone who was there, someone who is a warrior-poet.
I will close with this. Exactly two weeks ago, I flew to Israel to bury my father. I was there for twelve hours. In shock and grief, I stood on a sandy hill in the cemetery in Beit Shemesh, forty-five minutes from Jerusalem, as cypress trees wilted in the hot wind and the ancient words were recited.
I can’t explain it, but living and breathing Helprin’s soaring prose brought me comfort--a sense that I had left Dad in a place of welcoming spirits, a sense that he was not alone.
I am in awe of Mark Helprin’s power with words. Oh, can he write. He makes sentences dance the way chimes move in an evening breeze, with music, in an order unexpected and always new. This is the best depiction of living in the state of Israel that I have ever read, and, I suspect, the best ever written in the English language.
The book opens with two heart-stopping passages. The first is a lyrical and gripping account of a badly-wounded soldier at the time of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. For a few days, it was uncertain whether Israel would still exist at the end of it. After the Six Day War, the government and army grew overconfident, and was consequently unprepared for the attack. I was just a little girl, but I remember rumors of graves being dug in public parks to bury all the dead.
The second passage was in equal parts gorgeous and exhilarating. Holocaust survivors of all stripes are being piloted on a crappy old boat from Europe to the British-ruled land of Israel. Over the course of their journey, the living remnants of entire families, entire villages, beaten down by unprecedented savagery, are slowly transformed into wily fighters. During the ensuing battle with a British ship determined to stop them, a child is born, and immediately orphaned.
The central section of the book is a series of wild adventure tales that this child, Marshall Pearl, goes on to experience. It might interest readers to know that the adventures are largely autobiographical, for Mark Helprin has lived one hell of an interesting life. Still, many of them could be lifted from this very long book, interchanged, rearranged, or cut out entirely, and it would make no difference to the plot. They’re exciting, and there are beautiful touches of of magical realism, but truthfully, many of these episodes don’t drive the story forward, they are merely fun to read.
But it is the last section of the book that left me gasping. Marshall enlists in the Israeli army, in the year before the Yom Kippur War, and it is so blindingly clear that Helprin actually did this that it brought tears to my eyes. Here is the Israel I know, the land that took in Germans and French and Czechoslovakians and Hungarians and Romanians and Poles and Russians and Azerbaijanians and Yemenites and Moroccans and Egyptians and Tunisians and Algerians and Indians and Ethiopians and bound them into one people.
With fondness, humor and precision, Helprin describes his unit in the army, made up of criminals and the insane, the strenuous and endless kitchen duty they were assigned, the casual way officers and enlisted men interact with one another, the exhausting and mind-numbing hikes. I laughed until I couldn’t breathe, remembering my year on kibbutz, where I, too, could curse like a sailor at my boss, and he would look at me in a puzzled way and ask me to repeat it in Hebrew; I, too, only understood names, pronouns and numbers in the course of long, rambling speeches given in Ivrit. Helprin describes the streets and the desert and the air and the wadis and the hills and the houses and the foods and the cafes and the smells and the marketplaces. He describes what it feels like to be a Jew living in a small sliver of land surrounded on all sides by enemies. He describes what it feels like to be a soldier charged with defending that land. He describes the gorgeous multicolored and multicultural quilt that is the people and the culture. And the land itself...what it does to people...well, he knows. For better or for worse, there’s a different gravitational pull there; it draws out people’s passions and faith and zeal.
It took me five or six weekends to get through this long, dense book packed with vivid, glorious language, but I flew through the last section, the one titled “Refiner’s Fire.” It ends with a heart-pounding tank battle that defined Israel’s narrow, knife-edge victory, paying tribute to the astounding, selfless courage of people fighting for their homeland, and it feels like it was written by someone who was there, someone who is a warrior-poet.
I will close with this. Exactly two weeks ago, I flew to Israel to bury my father. I was there for twelve hours. In shock and grief, I stood on a sandy hill in the cemetery in Beit Shemesh, forty-five minutes from Jerusalem, as cypress trees wilted in the hot wind and the ancient words were recited.
I can’t explain it, but living and breathing Helprin’s soaring prose brought me comfort--a sense that I had left Dad in a place of welcoming spirits, a sense that he was not alone.
March 26, 2012
This is a book about people's lives, and it's one of those where saying too much risks spoiling it. There are a lot of lives, and deaths tangled together in this tale, and a lot of references to a history I know very little about. It made me wonder about a lot of things - a quality I always appreciate in a book.
What I enjoyed most was the sprinkling of observation - dashes of broader philosophy, some of which I agreed with more than others, but which made me sit up, and think. I don't need to agree, I do like to be provoked.
There are places where the narrative leans towards maigcal realism, and reality threatens to break down in ways that made me think about Philip K Dick. This is the first Helprin novel I've read, so I had no idea what to expect, and had been led to think he was more fantastical and less literary, but this is a book I wouldn't want to try and pigeon hole.
I love the descriptions, the strange linguistic juxtapositions that give a sense of things even though, when you take them apart, they don't alwys make any sense at all. When a thing works even though I'm sure it shouldn't, that always gets my attention. The prose style is lovely, although it took me while to get used to the rhythm of the voice. I'm white, English, female, and in many ways this book is male and American, and Jewish, and the cadences were unfamiliar to my ear, at first. So getting to grips with the pcing of sentences took a little time, and made for an interesting experience all by itself.
I shall be looking for more.
What I enjoyed most was the sprinkling of observation - dashes of broader philosophy, some of which I agreed with more than others, but which made me sit up, and think. I don't need to agree, I do like to be provoked.
There are places where the narrative leans towards maigcal realism, and reality threatens to break down in ways that made me think about Philip K Dick. This is the first Helprin novel I've read, so I had no idea what to expect, and had been led to think he was more fantastical and less literary, but this is a book I wouldn't want to try and pigeon hole.
I love the descriptions, the strange linguistic juxtapositions that give a sense of things even though, when you take them apart, they don't alwys make any sense at all. When a thing works even though I'm sure it shouldn't, that always gets my attention. The prose style is lovely, although it took me while to get used to the rhythm of the voice. I'm white, English, female, and in many ways this book is male and American, and Jewish, and the cadences were unfamiliar to my ear, at first. So getting to grips with the pcing of sentences took a little time, and made for an interesting experience all by itself.
I shall be looking for more.
August 1, 2009
Mark Helprin's "Refiner's Fire" is one of the most original fictional books I have ever read. Written in a whimsical, almost magical, style, the book begins with the main character, Marshall Pearl, ailing in a Haifa Hospital, gravely wounded from an artillery shell fired near Mount Hermon in the opening salvo of the Yom Kippur War. From there, the book tells the story of his life, from being born an orphan on a refugee ship in Palestine to fighting Rastas in Jamaica and searching for the story of his father amidst the frozen crevices of Mount Chamonix.
While adventuring through the world, Marshall goes through tests small and large, each of which will help make him into a man. Although the reader begins the book knowing that there will be some point at which Marshall goes through the refiner's fire, Helprin makes the story up to that moment both full and complex. Rather than just letting the big events do the shaping, Helprin shows how a person like Marshall, naturally brave and independent, can be tested in all sorts of ways, knowingly and unknowingly, and then draw upon the results of those tests for when it really counts.
The book demands the attention of the reader and, if it is given, the reader is rewarded with a lovely, intricate tale replete with beautiful language and thoughtful observations. For instance, while in the hills of the West Bank, Helprin observes that, "It was easy to die near Jerusalem, as easy as falling in the undertow of a history which surged in tides and currents and was unknown, but left its marks like wind eroding the rock. All things conspired there on a high part of the stage upon which they had come at their risk."
At the same time, however, although the majority of the book was involving, there were stretches in which the writing was a little too dream-like and detached, a bit distracting from the plot. Had the book contained fewer cluttered sentences and focused more on the difficulties and trials that cause "steel and gold and silver [to:] spring from the previously soft souls of the tried," I believe it would have been an even stronger effort.
Still, the book is a great achievement and its sometimes-crowded and reaching sentences can be overlooked in a story of great beauty, told by a dazzling writer. Highly recommended.
While adventuring through the world, Marshall goes through tests small and large, each of which will help make him into a man. Although the reader begins the book knowing that there will be some point at which Marshall goes through the refiner's fire, Helprin makes the story up to that moment both full and complex. Rather than just letting the big events do the shaping, Helprin shows how a person like Marshall, naturally brave and independent, can be tested in all sorts of ways, knowingly and unknowingly, and then draw upon the results of those tests for when it really counts.
The book demands the attention of the reader and, if it is given, the reader is rewarded with a lovely, intricate tale replete with beautiful language and thoughtful observations. For instance, while in the hills of the West Bank, Helprin observes that, "It was easy to die near Jerusalem, as easy as falling in the undertow of a history which surged in tides and currents and was unknown, but left its marks like wind eroding the rock. All things conspired there on a high part of the stage upon which they had come at their risk."
At the same time, however, although the majority of the book was involving, there were stretches in which the writing was a little too dream-like and detached, a bit distracting from the plot. Had the book contained fewer cluttered sentences and focused more on the difficulties and trials that cause "steel and gold and silver [to:] spring from the previously soft souls of the tried," I believe it would have been an even stronger effort.
Still, the book is a great achievement and its sometimes-crowded and reaching sentences can be overlooked in a story of great beauty, told by a dazzling writer. Highly recommended.
January 23, 2008
This is my favorite novel of all. Helprin is one of the best living American writers. His plots are transcendantly beautiful, and his phrasing is almost unbearably lovely. I wish I could live inside one of his novels.
December 30, 2013
The key to appreciating Mark Helprin's novel comes 324 pages into the book:
"I insisted that they tell you who you really are, and since you have no way of being that other self of which you were robbed by shifts in history, you're sort of stuck. You don't really fit in anywhere. Where would you?"
Orphan Marshall Pearl is a man without a back story, and his many adventures help him to draw closer to the truth about his origins. Time is porous in Helprin's story, just one of several elements of magical realism that enrich the tale.
The novel is fairly epic in scope. There are a few jump-the-shark moments in this lengthy (543 pages) book and the characters are a bit too heroic/bright, but the quality of the writing kept drawing me back.
"A country in war is a country alive. It hurts all the time and is full of sorrow, but is as alive as the blaze of a fire, as energetic and restless as an animal in its pen -- full of sex and desires of the heart."
"She believed strongly that all dreams are remembrances of circular time, windows into a future which has once passed."
"Even at home he had been drawn to tombs as small stories of lives, encompassments terribly inadequate and yet calling for homage, respect and not a little thought."
"So she changed her mind, thinking that Rica Vista existed in a thousand different ways, and that if by ruling with a tired hand she tired it, she would be doing it a disservice. For it was as well a brighter, younger patch of lands than she knew she could see. She realized that the meaning of their lives was much the direction in which history had pointed them. It would be better for all of them to die than to have abandoned course."
"He understood that nothing vanishes, that between the mirrors of heart and mind is a meditation long standing, infinite and full."
"He moved his hands back and forth over the stars as if to music. It was not the first time that he had been electrified by a soundless shower of stars, infinitely distant and untouched. It was not the first time that love had arisen from nowhere and given him strength, sustenance and peace."
"There is little more exquisite and taxing than devotion to a lost love. For it is one of the ways in the world to confront and beat mortality, like standing on a platform above time and earth and compassing everything in an eye, commanding time, inviting all images to circle and concentrate until they sear the cup of the eye, like fire."
"Did you know that for everyone who dies in war, there are others who are born, and reborn? That is why veterans will never make the peace, and why, in denying the nobility of battle, pacifists cultivate war. To stop something so powerful you must at least tell the truth about it."
"Marshall felt arising within him strength which he had not known, and was thankful. He thought that a man is like an ore, that difficulty and trial vaporize the earthly and the dross, and that in very hard times steel and gold and silver spring from the previously soft souls of the tried."
"I insisted that they tell you who you really are, and since you have no way of being that other self of which you were robbed by shifts in history, you're sort of stuck. You don't really fit in anywhere. Where would you?"
Orphan Marshall Pearl is a man without a back story, and his many adventures help him to draw closer to the truth about his origins. Time is porous in Helprin's story, just one of several elements of magical realism that enrich the tale.
The novel is fairly epic in scope. There are a few jump-the-shark moments in this lengthy (543 pages) book and the characters are a bit too heroic/bright, but the quality of the writing kept drawing me back.
"A country in war is a country alive. It hurts all the time and is full of sorrow, but is as alive as the blaze of a fire, as energetic and restless as an animal in its pen -- full of sex and desires of the heart."
"She believed strongly that all dreams are remembrances of circular time, windows into a future which has once passed."
"Even at home he had been drawn to tombs as small stories of lives, encompassments terribly inadequate and yet calling for homage, respect and not a little thought."
"So she changed her mind, thinking that Rica Vista existed in a thousand different ways, and that if by ruling with a tired hand she tired it, she would be doing it a disservice. For it was as well a brighter, younger patch of lands than she knew she could see. She realized that the meaning of their lives was much the direction in which history had pointed them. It would be better for all of them to die than to have abandoned course."
"He understood that nothing vanishes, that between the mirrors of heart and mind is a meditation long standing, infinite and full."
"He moved his hands back and forth over the stars as if to music. It was not the first time that he had been electrified by a soundless shower of stars, infinitely distant and untouched. It was not the first time that love had arisen from nowhere and given him strength, sustenance and peace."
"There is little more exquisite and taxing than devotion to a lost love. For it is one of the ways in the world to confront and beat mortality, like standing on a platform above time and earth and compassing everything in an eye, commanding time, inviting all images to circle and concentrate until they sear the cup of the eye, like fire."
"Did you know that for everyone who dies in war, there are others who are born, and reborn? That is why veterans will never make the peace, and why, in denying the nobility of battle, pacifists cultivate war. To stop something so powerful you must at least tell the truth about it."
"Marshall felt arising within him strength which he had not known, and was thankful. He thought that a man is like an ore, that difficulty and trial vaporize the earthly and the dross, and that in very hard times steel and gold and silver spring from the previously soft souls of the tried."
October 3, 2021
What makes a life? That’s the question at the center of this outstanding work of fiction. This is not in my usual choice of genres but I am so glad that something drew me to it. It could have been subtitles “The adventures of an orphan Jew through the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s”. Hard to say much more without spoiling the plot. Beautifully written and puts the reader into many slices of life in many different settings, including outstanding descriptions of life in Israel in the early ‘70s. The most endearing part of the boom was the chapter titled “Columbine” and this chapter served as the hook that really got me going on this book and that ultimately set up the rewards for reading it through to the end. Outstanding.
May 30, 2025
I've long characterized Refiner's Fire as my all-time favorite novel. Just reread it after a decade or so, and . . . yeah, it's still an astonishing book, lyrical and propulsive, thrilling and moving and often hilarious. Helprin gives Marshall Pearl, a foundling born on the shore of the fledgling Israeli state in 1949, a restlessness that drives the story forward from stunning set piece to stunning set piece, all the way to a explosive climax, and even though I already knew the events and even the words that conclude the novel, I couldn't put the book down. Many readers know Helprin for only Winter's Tale, his second novel, and that one is mesmerizingly good for the first ~130 pages; Refiner's Fire, his first, is great all the way to the end.
March 6, 2021
I haven't read this since sometime in the late 80s, after first reading Helprin's fantastic Winter's Tale, my favorite novel. At the time I remember enjoying it, but thinking of it as Helprin's slightly-flawed warm-up novel before writing his masterpiece. I'm now thinking that it isn't flawed at all, especially compared to Helprin's more recent efforts.
In Refiner's Fire you can definitely see groundwork being laid for both Winter's Tale and A Soldier of the Great War. It slips into magical realism and back again without warning, and without detracting from the story.
Though it begins and ends in the grim realities of war (the Yom Kippur war of 1973), most of the novel relates the coming of age of the protagonist, Marshal Pearl, who at the book's open lies wounded from battle in a hospital in Haifa. We then go back to the circumstances of his birth and his ridiculously fantastical life story. (And it's quite fantastical at times, particularly during a journey into the American West, which is when the novel is at its most magical-realist.)
So much better than Helprin's more recent novels. Sometimes writers improve over time. I think Helprin hit the ground running, and now he's just limping along. I'm glad I returned to this.
In Refiner's Fire you can definitely see groundwork being laid for both Winter's Tale and A Soldier of the Great War. It slips into magical realism and back again without warning, and without detracting from the story.
Though it begins and ends in the grim realities of war (the Yom Kippur war of 1973), most of the novel relates the coming of age of the protagonist, Marshal Pearl, who at the book's open lies wounded from battle in a hospital in Haifa. We then go back to the circumstances of his birth and his ridiculously fantastical life story. (And it's quite fantastical at times, particularly during a journey into the American West, which is when the novel is at its most magical-realist.)
So much better than Helprin's more recent novels. Sometimes writers improve over time. I think Helprin hit the ground running, and now he's just limping along. I'm glad I returned to this.
January 3, 2025
Full of imagery, poetic prose and purposeful narratives - this is a wonderful read, one of my all time favorites. I stumbled upon this accidentally, and couldn’t put it down once I started. This is a rare gem of a book.
July 31, 2022
Oh this is one of my faves by Helpin (and now I've read them all?). I think he intertwines the absurd and the thoughtful and the beautiful and the intense and the mystical in a really masterful way.
September 16, 2017
As usual - and, I say usual despite the fact that this is his first novel, because I read it after finishing everything but his latest, 'In Sunlight And In Shadow', which I will start today - Mark Helprin takes us on an expansive, sometimes enigmatic and esoteric, journey through the early life of Marshall pearl, a boy orphaned at birth aboard an illegal immigrant ship off the coast of Palestine in 1947. From battles in Jamaica to train hopping across the American Midwest; from seas to Alps to deserts, Helprin weaves his tale with what has come to be his signature stunningly eloquent prose, so affecting that you feel the icy wind of an eagle observatory in the rocky mountains, or sweat with fear like the soldiers crammed inside an armored vehicle in Israel. This first novel sometimes feels like a first, being somewhat confusing at times, not quite as smoothly rendered as his later work, but even so, Marshal is one of the most intricately realized characters I have ever journeyed with. I can't say enough about this novel, except that if you pass on this adventure you are missing something beautiful.
February 13, 2017
Alright, Helprin, I give in. You got me again. I fought you through the first 100 pages and finally surrendered to your prose. You swept me along on a current of 75 pages a day until the end. Well done.
August 29, 2024
The great Mark Helprin's first novel, notable mainly for showing so clearly the raw writing ability which, when it matured, would enable him to produce such classics as A Soldier of the Great War, Winter's Tale, and Memoir From Antproof Case. In RF, his style is rough and the transitions to magical realism are choppy. The magical realism itself is delivered with a sledge hammer; Helprin had not yet developed his wonderful skill of introducing it so subtly in his set pieces that the reader is never quite sure where reality stopped. For these reasons alone, it was fun to reread this book, knowing what was going to come later in his career. Perhaps I'll reread ASOTGW--again; will this be the third or fourth time?--just to see the changes. Anyway, if you're a Helprin fan already and haven't read this one, do it for fun. If you're seeking an introduction to the brilliant Mr. H's work, start with ASOTGW or WT to see him at his best.
Reread 8/28/24 My earlier comments still stand; Helprin writes beautiful prose.
Reread 8/28/24 My earlier comments still stand; Helprin writes beautiful prose.
January 7, 2008
Beautiful writing! This story and its main character Marshall Pearl are full of passion and courage and principles. Helprin writes with such bright and colorful descriptions of all the places Marshall travels that you are right there with him each moment. It's an inspiring story and makes you want to live life fiercely.
August 12, 2013
Sweet, dark chocolate, cool red wine and stolen kisses under a waxing moon.
Ultimately, one of Helprin's lesser works, but only by virtue of it being his first novel. Rumours of too many anti-feminist rants or that it's "a 'guys' book" are greatly exaggerated: it speaks truth, with the passion of an experienced heart.
Read and ascend.
Ultimately, one of Helprin's lesser works, but only by virtue of it being his first novel. Rumours of too many anti-feminist rants or that it's "a 'guys' book" are greatly exaggerated: it speaks truth, with the passion of an experienced heart.
Read and ascend.
October 4, 2012
I would consider this the most "guy" book of Helprin's collection. I remember it as being full of battles and Navy talk and guy moments. But I liked it nonetheless. Perhaps 20 years as a Navy wife, made it more understandable to me.
December 12, 2013
It was overwhelming, and fascinating. Helprin is not for everyone, but I think his books were magnificent. In particular, this book provides the best description of life and events in early Israel that I've ever read.
Read
August 7, 2011Helprin is a fine author who more people need to discover.
August 5, 2023
Helprin's first novel, published in 1977. I read a 1990 Mariner Books 'trade paperback' edition.
From-the-off, Helprin had established his style. For me it always comes over a combination of William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway (which Helprin wouldn't appreciate I suspect, as Hemingway was an anti-semite) and a bit of Gravity's Rainbow era Thomas Pynchon, and a bit of Gene Wolfe. Plus a unique element that could only be described as 'Helprian'.
I'd read Refiner's Fire three decades ago, and had forgot it entirely, so really a new novel for me. But I needed to read some Helprin to wash-away the taste of In Sunlight and In Shadow which I read last year and loathed. I should have DnF'd it, but I persisted to-the-end and found that it was a sort of 'Helpin-by-the-numbers' novel; as if what you'd expect a Helprin novel to read like had it been written by AI.
So Refiner's Fire has repaired that damage. It has the familiar Helprin themes; a sense-of-magic, both real and perceived, always present at the very edge of reality. There's the ever-present beautiful and sexy women, the seemingly unstoppable and determined Hero. Indeed Helprin's male protagonists often remind me of the five tenets of Taekwondo; courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control and indomitable spirit. The story is fast-paced, the dialogue a tad sloppy, but on occasions Helprin's writing ascends to a level that few others can ever reach. We get a sort of prototype for
the Lake of the Coheeries (from Winter's Tale) and there are a few chapters which see that narrative style that Winter's Tale employed being developed. Indeed between Refiner's Fire and Winter's Tale there's just the short story collection Ellis Island and Other Stories. Marshall Pearl shares much with Peter Lake, who likewise shares much with Alessandro Giuliani, with a little of the unnamed narrator of Memoir From Antproof Case (well, perhaps not quite that loopy) and of course Harry Copeland, from the unfortunate In Sunlight and In Shadow.
Helprin books always have a musical association with me. I read Winter's Tale a few years after being introduced to Al Stewart's album Year of the Cat. I very much doubt Helprin would appreciate Stewart's British prog/folk history-based songs, but there you are. And of course every Helprin novel will remind many readers of The Polar Express movie, not least because of Helprin's work with Chris Van Allsburg, who illustrated The Polar Express book.
The last hundred pages-or-so of Refiner's Fire set preceding and during the 1973 Yom Kippur War is probably the most focused writing that Helprin has ever offered. It's riveting, and the cinematic ending to the novel is just fabulous.
From-the-off, Helprin had established his style. For me it always comes over a combination of William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway (which Helprin wouldn't appreciate I suspect, as Hemingway was an anti-semite) and a bit of Gravity's Rainbow era Thomas Pynchon, and a bit of Gene Wolfe. Plus a unique element that could only be described as 'Helprian'.
I'd read Refiner's Fire three decades ago, and had forgot it entirely, so really a new novel for me. But I needed to read some Helprin to wash-away the taste of In Sunlight and In Shadow which I read last year and loathed. I should have DnF'd it, but I persisted to-the-end and found that it was a sort of 'Helpin-by-the-numbers' novel; as if what you'd expect a Helprin novel to read like had it been written by AI.
So Refiner's Fire has repaired that damage. It has the familiar Helprin themes; a sense-of-magic, both real and perceived, always present at the very edge of reality. There's the ever-present beautiful and sexy women, the seemingly unstoppable and determined Hero. Indeed Helprin's male protagonists often remind me of the five tenets of Taekwondo; courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control and indomitable spirit. The story is fast-paced, the dialogue a tad sloppy, but on occasions Helprin's writing ascends to a level that few others can ever reach. We get a sort of prototype for
the Lake of the Coheeries (from Winter's Tale) and there are a few chapters which see that narrative style that Winter's Tale employed being developed. Indeed between Refiner's Fire and Winter's Tale there's just the short story collection Ellis Island and Other Stories. Marshall Pearl shares much with Peter Lake, who likewise shares much with Alessandro Giuliani, with a little of the unnamed narrator of Memoir From Antproof Case (well, perhaps not quite that loopy) and of course Harry Copeland, from the unfortunate In Sunlight and In Shadow.
Helprin books always have a musical association with me. I read Winter's Tale a few years after being introduced to Al Stewart's album Year of the Cat. I very much doubt Helprin would appreciate Stewart's British prog/folk history-based songs, but there you are. And of course every Helprin novel will remind many readers of The Polar Express movie, not least because of Helprin's work with Chris Van Allsburg, who illustrated The Polar Express book.
The last hundred pages-or-so of Refiner's Fire set preceding and during the 1973 Yom Kippur War is probably the most focused writing that Helprin has ever offered. It's riveting, and the cinematic ending to the novel is just fabulous.
February 23, 2022
This was the second book I’ve read written by Mark Helprin. The first book I read by him was A Winter’s Tale, I was blown away by his writing, pulled into the winter wonderland world that his main character lived in, or did he really live in it or was it a dream? I could see how that could be so. I had never heard of Mark Helprin before I read A Winter’s Tale, but I was hooked, by the writing style that some others have called “magical realism”. The book stayed with me for so long, that when I saw this book in my towns local bookstore over the recent holiday about the Adventures of Marshall Pearl, I knew I had to have it. I am so glad that I did purchase it, but I don’t know if this book quite grabbed me the same way as a Winter Tale. I enjoyed the main character and his drive to overcome any obstacle that was out in his way, while he appeared to be small In stature, by the descriptions, he was larger than life by the adventures he found himself in. He seemed to be exploring, figuring himself out, and he met interesting people along the way. The main character had several interconnected people that showed up at different times in the book. I did think the second half of the book was a little more fast paced, the connections made a lot more sense. I loved seeing him and his childhood first love come together and make a life of continued adventures together. I was glad he finally got to serve in an army after all his years. I was a little confused in the last section on what ended up happening, did he live, did he die? did he get reconciled to the key individuals who were making their way to him? I suppose that the events leading up to the end and the last section were made to make the reader come to their own conclusion. I struggled with which stars to give this book, I would say it is about a 3.5, for the last half of the book. It didn’t quite make it into my 4 star category, but it deserves more than a 3 for the way the author dove so deep into this character and made you want to fight with him and see him win. The culmination of many pieces of his life came together towards the end and it made everything he had been through up to that point make much more sense.
October 31, 2023
I have been a Mark Helprin fan ever since reading, “A Soldier of the Great War,” many years ago. His storytelling is exquisite, his characters fascinating, and his writing is uniquely rich and, for lack of a better word, artistic. Helprin sees the world as an artist does and he literally paints with words. Consequently, reading Helprin is more demanding, but it always turns out to be a labor of love. Did I say I was a Helprin fan?
“Refiner’s Fire,” was Helprin’s first novel and what it lacks in polish is more than compensated by the author’s dedication to telling the story accurately and with feeling. As the book opens during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Marshall Pearl is a gravely wounded Israelí soldier. This serves as both the beginning and the ending of the novel. In between, we have the fascinating story of Pearl’s life, he is literally born in battle, an orphan in Palestine rescued by a maverick American naval officer, an adopted child of some privilege in the United States and Jamaica, a Harvard student, an itinerant vagabond, a sailor, and finally a farmer on an Israeli kibbutz. All this and more shapes him into the unique person he becomes. We see his journey primarily through Marshall’s eyes and we are treated to an intriguing cast of friends, lovers, enemies, mentors, and muses. Marshall also sees the world as an artist and shares his “visions” with the reader. They are often magical. Helprin has reluctantly admitted that the novel is more autobiographical than he originally thought. There is something intensely personal about this book.
In his later works, I feel Helprin has become more adept at disciplining his artistic temperament in the service of his story. In this first novel, his artistry in language is on full display and can be a distraction. Hence, my description of reading Helprin as “a labor of love.” But it is well worth it. One truly sees the world differently for awhile after reading his books. Recommended.
“Refiner’s Fire,” was Helprin’s first novel and what it lacks in polish is more than compensated by the author’s dedication to telling the story accurately and with feeling. As the book opens during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Marshall Pearl is a gravely wounded Israelí soldier. This serves as both the beginning and the ending of the novel. In between, we have the fascinating story of Pearl’s life, he is literally born in battle, an orphan in Palestine rescued by a maverick American naval officer, an adopted child of some privilege in the United States and Jamaica, a Harvard student, an itinerant vagabond, a sailor, and finally a farmer on an Israeli kibbutz. All this and more shapes him into the unique person he becomes. We see his journey primarily through Marshall’s eyes and we are treated to an intriguing cast of friends, lovers, enemies, mentors, and muses. Marshall also sees the world as an artist and shares his “visions” with the reader. They are often magical. Helprin has reluctantly admitted that the novel is more autobiographical than he originally thought. There is something intensely personal about this book.
In his later works, I feel Helprin has become more adept at disciplining his artistic temperament in the service of his story. In this first novel, his artistry in language is on full display and can be a distraction. Hence, my description of reading Helprin as “a labor of love.” But it is well worth it. One truly sees the world differently for awhile after reading his books. Recommended.
July 18, 2024
This was my third novel by Mark Helprin, after Winter's Tale and The Ocean and the Stars. I have to say that no other author that I've read wields language like he does. There is poetry woven into the fabric of his narrative, even in the two books that describe combat in a modern war. This is the tale of Marshall Pearl, a Russian Jew, whose experiences span several continents and result in unbelievably random but significant personal encounters that drive a wild ride of a plot. There are some sequences that read like fever dreams, which then revert to much conventional narrative, never leaving the ornate and powerful imagery at the heart of the novel. The Yom Kippur war is a keystone factor in the story, and Helprin describes the multi-ethnic and polyglot composition of the Israeli armed forces at that time, evoking the age old persecution of the Jewish diaspora. It reminded me how I have always cheered the bravery and determination of the Israelis in the many wars that they've fought during my lifetime (I was born in 1951). It is my sincere hope that the next PMs there will use the IDF with more discretion than the present one, who has sent their soldiers on an open ended war against an enemy that is using civilians as shields, and in the process guaranteeing an entirely new generation of Palestinians who will enlist with the terrorists. I mourn to see this remarkable nation caught in a cycle of violence without end. In any case, this is a great read.
December 5, 2025
Helprin is hit or miss for me. I know Winter's Tale is a fave for some, but I did not like its magical realism. Frederick and Fredericka was a DNF. On the other hand, I greatly appreciated A Soldier of the the Great War. This falls somewhere in the middle.
This is a robust adventure story from start to finish centering on Marshall Pearl. He is born on a ship near Palestine in 1947, orphaned soon after, and raised by a wealthy couple in the Hudson Valley. As a young boy, he camps in Columbine, CO where he meets Lydia, who will become his bride. As a young man, he battles in Jamaica, works a slaughterhouse, and stargazes atop the Rocky Mountains. This is but a few of his adventures; this book is all over the place.
The story begins and ends in a hospital in Israel. He has become an Israeli soldier and is gravely wounded. Helprin leaves the ending ambiguous. Did all these adventures happen or are they the hallucinations of a man near death?
This is a robust adventure story from start to finish centering on Marshall Pearl. He is born on a ship near Palestine in 1947, orphaned soon after, and raised by a wealthy couple in the Hudson Valley. As a young boy, he camps in Columbine, CO where he meets Lydia, who will become his bride. As a young man, he battles in Jamaica, works a slaughterhouse, and stargazes atop the Rocky Mountains. This is but a few of his adventures; this book is all over the place.
The story begins and ends in a hospital in Israel. He has become an Israeli soldier and is gravely wounded. Helprin leaves the ending ambiguous. Did all these adventures happen or are they the hallucinations of a man near death?
November 18, 2020
Helprin's first novel hasn't the epic sweep of Soldier of the Great War. It does have its moments, however - lots of them, enough to be worth the read.
It's not a tight narrative. What it is is more vignette along with plenty of fantasy. I was reminded often of Tim O'Brien and "Going After Cacciato." Helprin's descriptive power seems to accelerate suddenly, taking us past ordinary perception into new dimensions of fiction vs. fact. Like Cacciato, it's less important whether real or imagined (but for the reader discomfort being unable to distinguish at times).
Last thought. Helprin paints an image as few can do. While this isn't a great novel in comparison to others in the canon or even others he's written, you can't help but think while reading that investing in other Helprin books will be a good investment of time and thought.
HH
It's not a tight narrative. What it is is more vignette along with plenty of fantasy. I was reminded often of Tim O'Brien and "Going After Cacciato." Helprin's descriptive power seems to accelerate suddenly, taking us past ordinary perception into new dimensions of fiction vs. fact. Like Cacciato, it's less important whether real or imagined (but for the reader discomfort being unable to distinguish at times).
Last thought. Helprin paints an image as few can do. While this isn't a great novel in comparison to others in the canon or even others he's written, you can't help but think while reading that investing in other Helprin books will be a good investment of time and thought.
HH
January 12, 2019
This was a wonderful book by one of my favorite authors. A brilliant and engaging story about the life and development of a unique young man who goes on to fight for Israel in the 70s. Helprin writes beautiful prose and composes very unique storylines, and this book is no different. The only thing I didn't like, though, was that this early writing wasn't as concise and economical as his later work. The book just seemed to go a bit long, where maybe it didn't need to. Still a great book though, and highly recommended.
January 30, 2019
I guess I am simply not a fan of Mark Helprin. This is the second of his books I’ve read. The first I stopped half way through. This one I dragged to the finish. His prose is good enough, but I always feel his stories are highly unlikely; a bit like being plunged into someone else’s strange dream. I really wanted to like this book and its subject, but I didn’t because of how it was portrayed.
May 8, 2018
Another Helprin book with his typical exotic flowery idiomatic writing -- certain to either please or drive nuts readers. Complex with some depth of thought and writing that I like, keeping me interested and slowing me down to enjoy more.
Read
August 11, 2021I have read several of Mark Helprin's books and this was my least favorite. It started out with interesting characters and his beautiful prose but it took a really weird turn and I just couldn't stay with it. My favorite has been Paris in the Present Tense but I don't recommend this one.
October 19, 2024
The seeds of what make Helprin great are in this first novel, but it is too disjointed and lacks the character depth of his later novels. The last 3 chapters are very good, you could almost skip the rest of the book.
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