Fabulous story of two Jewish boys who start their brilliant ...

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	• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay Michael Chabon Picador, 2001 - 656 pages average customer review:based on 594 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Powerful

Chabon clearly demonstrates that he is one of America's finest novelists to date. There were times when I would set this book down, then be afraid to pick it back up, so all engaging were the characters, the setting and the story. Excellent. And what an ending.

Fabulous story of two Jewish boys who start their brilliant ...

... careers in comic books in the 1940s: an expression of guilt for one who left his family in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. This has it all - humor, history, great characters, golems. Longer review available at my website the Impatient Reader. See My Amazon profile for URL.

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escapism

This book robbed me of three nights worth of sleep, but it was worth it. The depth of research by Chabon allows the reader to enter past times and places effortlessly, and to watch as the characters live and grow among a dizzying set of circumstances.

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Shazam - Genius - an Encyclopedia of how men love.

It's been years since I've been as powerfully affected by a novel as I have been by Michael Chabon's Kavalier & Clay. Chabon is a virtuoso. The book is full of discrete vignettes, distinct and perfect as cut gemstones. Riveting, humorous, human, and thematically consistent and resonant - these scenes mesh and build and reflect with dazzling skill. When I first picked it up I couldn't understand - "Pulitzer Prize for a book about a couple of kids who write comic books?" Having read it - now I know. Chabon's amazing skill vividly illuminates New York city of the 30s and 40s and evokes the vanished world of immigrant Jews, the birth of comic books, the horror of the holocaust, as well as delineates the aching expanses of the human heart. Chabon's ability to situate you in place and time is astonishing - as his ability to make characters with depth and penetrating realism. Part of this incredible ability to project depth is his eye for detail. Just like "Moby Dick" teaches you tangentially about whaling and nineteenth century nautical technology this book schools you in such diverse subjects as Golems, Antarctic exploration, shortwave radio, magician's culture, locks, escape tricks, Prague, comic book culture & lore, surrealist art, New York geography and culture and the 1939 world's fair. It's larger than life - but feels incredibly real.

But far more than detail - this book's heart is about the many different ways men love; from moving mountains to fulfill a promise, all the way to casual rape. We see men loving family, women, men, art, a dog, a son, men loving pieces of equipment (particularly one loving a radio and another an airplane), etc... We see the stupidity and the wisdom - all the human frailty; and incredible resiliency and strength. It's funny - while reading the focus seems more on the pain - but in the end it's the love and connection that breaks your heart. For all its tragic content, this book is incredibly light and hopeful - and funny. There are a bunch of laugh out loud interludes. This is a wise, human, funny and ultimately kind book.

This is, indeed, a story about a couple of kids who create comic books in the late 30s - but it is far more. It is a story of the American dream; a whiz bang novel worthy of the moniker "Great American Novel". Art, fantasy, love, loss, redemption, and life interweave through this story in a distinctly American way that is beautiful, exhilerating, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting. This book makes me want to live - and more than any book in recent memory, this book makes want to write. I only wish I could write with this kind of verve and skill. I give this book my highest recommendation.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, page 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

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