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Summary: DREAM OF VENUS IN THE WORLD DURING WW II
Review: With skill and daring, Chabon engenders a time and a place, bringing into being a sense of life before "The Future" became a ho-hum thing. In many respects, his book is a companion to Miles Beller's "DREAM OF VENUS (OR LIVING PICTURES)," a novel of the 1939 New York World's Fair. Indeed, if you enjoyed Chabon's invented history you will find Beller's "DREAM OF VENUS" equally compelling.
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Summary: Oh. My. God.
Review: This is the best book that I have ever read -and no, not just because it won that little prize known as the Pulitzer. There was not, in my opinion, one single page of overwritten material in this novel. It has been a month since I have completed this gem, and i have yet to rid Rosa Sax, Joe Kavalier, Sam Clay, his mom... etc., of my memory. It is as if these characters were not characters at all, but constituents of my own real world. I am still bothered (in the nice way) by nostalgia. Sometimes I will be lying in bed at night and think of these characters. The overall effect of this novel is mind boggling, to be quite honest. If I were to reread it, it would be like reading excerpts from old classmates or something. What a perfectly written book. Regards.
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Summary: Does not compute.
Review: Could someone please explain to me how this won any award, much less the Pulitzer? I have loved every Pulitzer-winning novel I have ever read. Until now. Chabon's writing style drove me CRAZY. Too long, too many adjectives, and he does this annoying little thing with footnotes. I could not wait for this book to be OVER.
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Summary: You don't have to be a comics fan...
Review: As one who did not spend her formative years deep into The Green Hornet, Superman, or even Archie comics.. I demonstrate that you don't have to be a comics nut to love this book. Chabon is masterful, and after I finished this I ordered every other book he wrote, and loved them all. Well developed characters, a complex group of story lines. This is the best recent release I have read in a long long time.
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Summary: The Pulitzer People got it right this time
Review: When I first heard that the Pulitzer went to a book based on comics I was more than a bit curious. I figured the headlines had to be wrong or this would be a very unusual book. Well the book isn't really based on comics, although they do play a role as a backdrop for the whole story. You see the three main charaters write and paint for the comics. And that is where the magic comes in. Do you remember being a kid and believing that you could do anything? The magical feel and limitless imagination? Well that feeling lives throughought this book. But nevertheless this is a very adult book with very adult themes. The evil Nazi's, the heroic children, innocent victims, brave soldiers, evil businessmen, good businessmen, supressed homosexuality, drug addiction, insanity, despair...and most of all tremendous hope and spirit of redemption. I cannot recommend this book enough. About once a year I get to read abook that I cannot forget. The creativity and writing style are fantastic and bless Chabon's heart a complete pleasure.
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Summary: The Amazing Abilities of Michael Cabon
Review: First thing's first: I have never been a reader of comic books. I read Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys several months ago, and was in such awe of his talents that I swore I'd read his next novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I was somewhat reluctant at first, for I got the impression that the book would hold very little appeal for those who hadn't spent their formative years immersed in the panels of crime-fighting superheroes. But I couldn't have been more wrong. At the start of this epic tale, we are introduced to two young men. One is Sammy Clay, a daydreaming Jewish boy from Brooklyn, hoping one day to make something of himself. The other is Sammy's cousin, Joe Kavalier, an escapee of Nazi-occupied Prague. Through a series of events that can only be described as amazing, Joe has been forced to leave his family behind for the freedom of America, where he hopes to earn enough money to send for his family. When these two young men come together, Sam a gifted storyteller and Joe a skilled artist, an obvious solution presents itself to both of them. Comic books. The year is 1938 and comics are a relatively new cultural phenomenon. On the surface they offer the nation's youth a form of entertainment, but at a deeper level comic books provide Americans with a catharsis, a way to release the global tensions building during WWII. For Joe in particular, creating a story where the good guys are given free reign to fight evil week after week is a necessary outlet from his real life, where he is powerless to stop the attrocities happening across the Atlantic Ocean. From there, this sprawling novel takes off, taking us through the highs and lows endured by our dynamic duo and the woman who is inextricably tied to both of their lives, Rosa Saks. Chabon has clearly done his research, and it pays off. Throughout the novel we are given an insider's view into the inner workings of New York City in the 30's and 40's, into the life of Harry Houdini and the intricacies of his legendary escapism, into WWII and Surrealist art and the World's Fair, but most impressively, into the life of the comic book, both an inspiration and a model for contemporary American fiction. And even for the uncommon reader who has no interest in romance, intrigue, power, and desperation, Chabon's miraculous prose should be reason enough to enjoy this book. I can think of no contemporary writer of fiction, from T.C. Boyle to Don Delillo, who can write sentences, whether in executing a brilliant metaphor or pulling the reader through an action sequence, like Michael Chabon. Until reading this book, I had no idea what people were referring to when they spoke of the Great American Novel. I now know, for I have read it. And so should you.
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Summary: The Big, Big Book About The Comics
Review: Let's start with the cover - something most reviewers skip. I am a somewhat visual person. When I was waiting on table during college I learned that "people eat first with their eyes." If something doesn't look right on the plate your tip will suffer. I picked up my copy of "The Amazing Adventures . . ." at The San Francisco airport. The cover art caught my eye from about 50 feet away. I was intrigued - what kind of book looks for all the world like an aging comic book? It brought me back to Saturday afternoons in my room with my collection of suprehero stories - especially The Metal Men. And the collection secreted in the cupbord of the altarboy room that helped pass the few minutes before 6 AM mass - The Green Lantern, Superman, Batman. At 636 pages, this is not a quick read. At one level, this is a buddy-story. Two cousins, one an under-schooled but gifted writer and the other a gifted academy-trained artist - are thrown together and become a dynamic duo. Then there are several themes and characters that weave in and out of the story line - a golem (!), Harry Houdini, magic, and especially escapes. Joe Kavalier's dramatic escapes run through the book, but everybody in this book seems to be trying to escape from something - some from situatiions, some from people, some from life. Big issues - war, the nature of life, what constitutes art - are all intertwingled with the more mundane issues of evryday life - how to find a job, make a living, stay alive. Longing, hope and love battle with fear, self-loathing and dark desires. The charcters are real with real, everyday concerns. Their motives as complex and conflicting as a body could have. But, at the same time, their lives are larger than ours. The story could easily have degenerated into a mass of raw emotion or gone all clinical and cold on us. But the author has crafted a great story with believable charcters that held me in it's grip until the last page. Now I am really looking forward to reading more of Michael Chabon's work.
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Summary: Fasten your safety belt!
Review: Have you ever sat in the front car of the cyclone at Coney Island? It starts off slowly...up that first rise.. you get to the to top... hesitate for a nano second and then...
Do not give up on this book too soon, you will miss the ride of your life! Once it starts, it never stops!
Michael Chabon has a marvelous, wry sense of humor and the ability to make your heart ache. He has written a novel so full of life, love, laughter and adventure that you may find yourself having to come up for a breath of air every once in a while. (Not too often though, it's very difficult to stop turning the pages!)
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Summary: Amazing, indeed!
Review: I read quite a bit and have eclectic tastes, but I have never quite loved a book like I did Michael Chabon's wonderful novel "Kavalier & Clay". Yes, I know this sounds like one of those silly blurbs publishers like to plaster all over the dust jacket of a book, but this is the truth. This is a book that is not only a great entertainment, a real page turner in the addictive sense, which means you may find yourself staying up all hours of the night. But it's also a dazzling tour de force, a real work of art. Chabon's sense of style and prose is exciting, and his plotting is quite inventive.
The book begins at the dawn of WWII when Josef Kavalier, a young man with interests in magic and drawing, living in Nazi-occupied Prague, escapes to the U.S. to live with his aunt in N.Y.C. Here he meets his cousin of the same age, Sam Clay, who has a talent coming up with pulp plotlines and stories. Together the two of them come up with an idea for a comic book just at the time when the golden age of comics was to begin. But this is only the beginning of the story, I dare not reveal anymore.
The book moves quite freely between modes of nostalgia, humor, tragedy, social history and has a unique tone of melancholy thoughout. But this isn't a deadly somber book by any means, its just one hell of a ride that you must take. Chabon deservingly won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for this, read it.
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Summary: Formidable hommage to Kafka's dreams of America
Review: Chabons book works on many levels, always the sign of great writing. What struck is its refined allusions to Franz Kafka: the Prague setting, the harrowing trip to America and the adventurous life of the protagonist there, who finds and loses love and remains an outsider, just like the protagonist in his 'Amerika' novel. And as the Jewish, Prague-born arrtist is named Joe Kavalier he is obviously another 'Joseph K.' in modern literature, who feels guilt over something he did not do: the death of his younger brother. I could continue to point out the many other fine, small Kafka-aspects, but read and find them yourself. The book deserves it.
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