The Pacific and other stories
By: Mark Helprin.
Publisher: Penguin Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 366
Description: "The Pacific and Other Stories is a collection of sixteen stories displaying the remarkable scope, incomparable wit, and deft prose that have come to be Helprin's signature. A British paratrooper jumps into occupied territory in order to reconnoiter enemy positions and direct artillery fire, but a roof breaks his fall; physically shattered and fully alone, he must decide the extent of his devotion to his mission. The 1958 New York Yankees gain an unexpected teammate in a puny, teenage Hasidic Jew whom god has called to rescue the "house of Ruth." An opera impresario who has based his career on and ruined the life of a laundress-turned-diva now considers whether he ought to pluck from obscurity a soprano singing on a side street in Venice. A novelist in the 1940s, completely forgotten within the vast bureaucracy at U.S. Steel, constructs for himself a lifesaving sinecure. A September 11 widow receives an astonishing gift from the contractor working on her new apartment. In 1972, a female reservist in the Israeli army, who has despaired of love, finds it at the very last minute and in its finest expression, while floating in the sea off Haifa."--BOOK JACKET.
Table of contents: title: Il colore ritrovato; title: Reconstruction; title: Monday; title: A brilliant idea and his own; title: Vandevere's house; title: Prelude; title: Perfection; title: Sidney Balbion; title: Mar nueva; title: Rain; title: Passchendaele; title: Jacob Bayer and the telephone; title: Sail shining in white; title: Charlotte of the Utrechtseweg; title: Last tea with the armorers; title: The Pacific.