Library Journal Review: Helprin’s expansive, kitchen-sink fiction (Memoir from Antproof Case, A Soldier of the Great War) is often marked by the occasional madcap flight of fancy, but his latest is a full-out farce and a fable of epic proportions. Freddy, the Prince of Wales, is a stiff intellectual, while his beautiful wife, Princess Fredericka, lives for public adoration. To save the monarchy from an all-consuming media circus, these thinly veiled versions of Prince Charles and Princess Diana are sent on a mission; they’re kicked out of the palace and literally dropped from a plane into New Jersey. To avoid the limelight while wandering America, they must live as destitute tramps and find themselves tossed into myriad strange situations. But, remarkably, through their hardscrabble existence they find themselves drawn closer together than ever before. 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. Recommended for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/05.]?Misha Stone, Seattle P.L.?Misha Stone, Seattle P.L. Copyright ? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
?Misha Stone, Seattle P.L.