Describe your favourite book

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?

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. ↩