The Avid Reader Show

Episode 786: Elegy in Blue - Mark Helprin


Listen Later

Told in an exceptional literary voice, mixing comedy and tragedy, Elegy in Blue is a hymn to New York, memory, loyalty, and love.

High in a subsidized studio apartment, the unnamed 82-year-old narrator of Elegy in Blue looks out across the rooftops of Brooklyn all the way to the sea.

His distinguished career on Wall Street is in ruins, his mansion in Brooklyn Heights has been burned to the ground, and most of all, his father, his son, and his wife—the stunningly beautiful and equally kind Clare—have been taken from him, one by one, over the decades, by war and an act of violence.

Now his “allegiance is to his ghosts.” He’s almost lost to memory, reflection, and a purposeful letting go of life. But when violence threatens to destroy another family, he takes drastic action in hope of restoring a portion of justice to the world.

Can he fashion his life into an elegy, one that heals a broken heart and relieves the sting of death?

Mark Helprin is the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of Paris in the Present Tense, Winter’s Tale, In Sunlight and in Shadow, A Soldier of the Great War, Freddy and Fredericka, The Pacific, Swan Lake, Ellis Island, Memoir from Antproof Case, and numerous other works.

Buy the book from Wellington Square Bookshop - ​
https://wellingtonsquarebooks.com/book/9781419786082

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

The Avid Reader ShowBy Samuel Hankin

  • 3.6
  • 3.6
  • 3.6
  • 3.6
  • 3.6

3.6

43 ratings


More shows like The Avid Reader Show

View all
Stuff You Should Know by iHeartPodcasts

Stuff You Should Know

78,688 Listeners

Talk Bookish To Me by Talk Bookish To Me

Talk Bookish To Me

62 Listeners

The Shit No One Tells You About Writing by Bianca Marais, Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra

The Shit No One Tells You About Writing

786 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

16,525 Listeners

We Can Do Hard Things by Treat Media and Glennon Doyle

We Can Do Hard Things

41,512 Listeners

The Town with Matthew Belloni by The Ringer

The Town with Matthew Belloni

1,132 Listeners

Good Hang with Amy Poehler by The Ringer

Good Hang with Amy Poehler

12,559 Listeners

Welcome to the Party by Treat Media

Welcome to the Party

1,043 Listeners