Here's a great, glossy pudding of a novel by an author I'd praised earlier for his vigor, imagination and economy. Kind-hearted critics call disasters of this magnitude "ambitious," but the problem with "Winter's Tale" is that it's not ambitious enough. Mark Helprin seems determined to get through his nearly 700 pages on charm and a fuzzy vision of the millennium alone. This means his story doesn't have a conventional plot or credible characters. It offers instead a succession of implausible incidents and a crowd of vaguely mythic figures: heroes and lovable ladies, villains and megalomaniac fools, even a wonder horse, doughty in battle and capable of flight.

Most of the action takes place in Manhattan at the beginning and end of this century. With leaden hand, Helprin assures us that the city is the worst of places—violent, corrupt and despairing, and yet dazzling in its potential for spiritual...