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Title: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Nova Audio Books) by Michael Chabon, David Colacci ISBN: 1-58788-123-3 Publisher: Brilliance Audio Pub. Date: October, 2000 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 6 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.24 (412 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Amazing adventure tale
Comment: As Hitler conquers Europe, the Golden Age of Comic Books invades the United States in this story full of flight, transformation, and escape. Two Jewish cousins team up to make their mark on both continents. Artist Josef Kavalier arrives in New York City in 1939, having used his magician's training to smuggle himself out of Prague. His younger cousin, seventeen-year-old Sammy Klayman, has dreamed of escaping Brooklyn his whole life. When Sammy's boss approves a new comic book series, Kavalier and Clay (Klayman) together begin to brainstorm ideas for their superhero. What motivates their hero? The duo quickly creates The Escapist, whose mission is to rescue people everywhere from oppression. Taking on Hitler in their first issue, their success soon provides the money that Sammy and Joe need to seek their disparate dreams. When Joe falls under the spell of Rosa Saks, she inspires a new character, Luna Moth. Joe's repeated failures to rescue his family from Europe, Sammy's shame for his homosexual encounters, and Rosa's secret pregnancy bring about more transformations, flights, and escapes. Chabon, author of Wonder Boys (Villard, 1995) delivers rich prose that is a far cry from the monosyllabic speech bubbles of Batman. This book has the heft of an epic and fulfills that promise with descriptions of Houdini-esque escape, comic book history, an intriguing plot, wry humor, snappy dialogue, and numerous heroes and villains. Mature teens will enjoy the hows and whats of this book, but it is the motivation of the characters, the question of "Why?" that will keep them flipping the pages of this winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Rating: 4
Summary: A well-written, tho overambituous, book
Comment: Michael Chabon is an amazing writer. I loved "Mysteries of Pittsburgh," and I greatly enjoyed "The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," though with some reservations as explained below.
Written in a swirl of intertwining conflicts between sex, art, love, war, hope, and comic books, "The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" delighted me to no end.
Chabon's depiction of the comic-book scene of the late '30s and early '40s feels very authentic, and his weaving of comic plot into the novel was as effective as it was entertaining. The details of Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay's lives growing up in Prague and New York, respectively, glowed with vivid imagery: carnivals, escape artists, tiny strong men, and Nazis all conspired into a gaudy kaleidoscope that fueled the imaginations of the two future artists.
But what was the book about? It was like a series of sketches loosely tied together. Was it about Sam's homosexuality? Or was his sexuality just a convenient plot twist to allow Joe to get his woman in the end? Was it about revenge? Joe's on the Nazis, Sam's on poverty? I never could tell, and I suspect Chabon didn't know either.
Sure you could argue that the novel, like a series of comics, was full of soap-opera-like twists and turns, was simply mirroring the structure of its subject. But I doubt that. Chabon was overambituous.
Nonetheless, it was a great book.
Rating: 3
Summary: Amazingly tedious at times
Comment: I found this book hard to read. I liked the characters, the setting, and the plot. However, more than once I felt like I was reading someone's master's thesis on superaction comic book heros in American culture which told me much more than I needed to know to move the story along. The lengthly context-setting descriptions interrupted the flow of the plot, character development, and dialogue. Large portions of this book read more like a reference work than a novel. I hope they make a movie out of this as the visual medium would instantly communicate the context that took pages to describe in text.
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Title: Empire Falls by Richard Russo ISBN: 0375726403 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Middlesex : A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides ISBN: 0312422156 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 16 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Wonder Boys : A Novel by Michael Chabon ISBN: 0312140940 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 15 December, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Life of Pi by Yann Martel ISBN: 0156027321 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri ISBN: 039592720X Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 01 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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