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Book Summary and Reviews of Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin

Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin

Freddy and Fredericka

A Novel

by Mark Helprin

  • Published:
  • Jul 2005, 576 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Freddy and Fredericka will ascend the English throne only if they reacquire the American colonies and become noble spirits in an ignoble age. Helprin's latest work, an extraordinarily funny allegory of a most peculiar British royal family, is immensely mocking of contemporary monarchy and yet deeply sympathetic to the individuals caught in its lonely absurdities.....this brilliantly refashioned fairy tale is a magnificently funny farce.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

'Rarely does the narrative shimmer with the lyricism that distinguishes Helprin's best work, but readers can have fun with this book, which is probably all Helprin intended.' - PW.
'While Helprin often succumbs to cheap-shot lampooning humor, his prose never flags; there is a regal quality to his writing in anything that he undertakes. Still, the novel is a disappointment. It feels more like an empty exercise or a stop-gap for Helprin, lacking the emotional depth of his earlier work.' - Library Journal.
'Replete with slapstick and hilarious linguistic misunderstandings, this intermittently verbose yet irresistibly mischievous fable draws freely on Don Quixote, Mark Twain, Monty Python, and Jerzy Kosinski's 'Being There', yet is in the end pure Helprin in its narrative agility and celebration of nature's glory and human kindness, courage, and love.' - Booklist.

This information about Freddy and Fredericka was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Mark Helprin Author Biography

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.

Author Interview
Link to Mark Helprin's Website

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