Rating: 
Summary: A Comic Epic
Review: This is quite an amazing book. Epic in it's scope, it deals with the lives of two cousins and their experiences in the world of comic books. One, Josef Kavalier has just escaped his native home in Prague after the German occupation to live with his cousin in New York. Sammy Clay on the other hand is a confused 17 year old wanting only to escape from his home and become rich. Joe, a one time escape artist and artist, wants to make money to help the rest of his family come to America. Sam convinces Joe to help him get started in the world of comic books and thus the partnership of Kavalier and Clay is born.
In the corse of the novel both go through their share of joy and pain. One of the best aspects of the book is the way that Chabon is able to perfectly capture the feel of that period in time. We get a realistic view of what it's like to be in the situation of both characters. It also serves to give a great view on the industry of comics. Comics were never really taken seriously at that point in time and mostly thought of as ana escape from reality. Chabon takes the view, however, that comics real worth is derived from the fact that they serve as an escape especially at that time. As the novel progresses through the lives of the two main characters, both of their hardships are displayed and the book deals with many of the unfortunate and depressing events of life. There are a large number of themes within it but mainly they focus on the feelings which society finds acceptable for us to have and how people deal with injustice and loss. The fact that it's able to deal with so many issues and still have a riveting story is what makes it truly an amazing book.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful and wrapped in nostalgia
Review: It's strange that Chabon chose a popular, pulp thing like comic books to wrap a story that is at its best quirky and totally original. My first instinct is to liken this novel to something by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in that it flirts with what has been called "magic realism", but I think it more correct to say that the strange powers and liberal application of unrealistic contrivances is a stylistic nod to the comics that play such a central role in the novel. However, this book does much more than attempt to legitimize the comic book. It succeeds in telling a story of friendship beset by changing modern values and desires. The strength of this novel lies in Chabon's ability to prefectly portray the nature of male friendship and kinship.
Rating:
Summary: Get in touch with the super hero within
Review: Another airport find! Kavalier is a young comic artist who escapes the badest bad guys (Nazi Germany) only to find himself in a new country out of contact with his family. From the depths of powerlessness and doom comes the invention of his superhero. Pen and brush couldn't destroy Hitler, but the artist can imagine characters who can. Okay, this may not be on the same level as The Red Badge Of Courage. But it is a great story and you'll love it.
Rating: 
Summary: Overated, But Why?
Review: The question I ask after having completed this story, was why the Pulitzer Prize? Why all the hype? Yes, the concept of two young men who become comic book creators appealed to me on many levels. The setting was great as was the character development. In some ways I was reminded of Doctorow's Ragtime, perhaps because of the strong presence of Houdini. Yes the story was creative. There was action, there was romance, there was some great historical fiction, BUT, and a capital, BUT, Where the book fell short in my opinion was that it was too verbose, and the plot had too many twists and turns never fully developing. Yes there were events that were interesting, and various stories within the story, but every time they got to be interesting, they seemed to abruptly end. The book like many of Chabon's sentences was too long for where it took the reader. I expected more out of it and quite frankly think the critics have overated it. I do believe the subject matter was extremely clever, but the story should have been more tightly woven and at the same time should have been more contiguous. I do expect to see better future works from Chabon who I am sure will not write with as heavy a hand in the future as he develops his style further.
Rating:
Summary: BRILLIANT!
Review: Based on this book alone I believe that Michael Chabon is one of the best novelists in America -- ever. He did not write a book so much as he created a world. Seldom has a book so become a part of my thoughts, dwelt so often in my dreams, inspired me to want to read more, listen to more music, see more films. I couldn't wait to finish it, I hated for it to end. Chabon is a master of the written word, detail and dialogue.Comic books, New York city, the coming of World War II to America, magic, love, friendship, business, the 50's witch hunts, homosexuality -- it's a brilliant panorama, but never spins out of control. Tomorrow I'm going to start reading Chabon's other books.
Rating:
Summary: What Amazing Adventures?
Review: I had high expectations for this book, what with its Pulitzer prize credentials and its gorgeous multicolored cover featuring the Empire State Building. And although I would certainly not claim this is a poor novel, when I finished the book I felt a "Is that all there is?" kind of disappointment. With its "golden age of the comic book" subject matter and its potentially interesting mixture of characters, I thought that this lengthy saga would indeed feature some "amazing adventures." But aside from the early-on Golem escape episode and Joe Kavalier's riveting but all too brief WWII Antarctic odyssey, this novel is actually pretty dull fare overall, with an ending that is downright flat. I suspect that a lot of the appeal of this book stems from its incorporation of a veritable potpourri of fashionable topics and themes, encompassing thirties and forties New York City arcana, the emergence of the comic book adventure story as a popular institution, Houdini-inspired magician's artistry, Jewish mysticism, struggles with issues of homosexual identity, escape from the shadow of the Holocaust, and on and on. This was potentially "socko" fare, and yet overall, the prose and story line plod rather than soar. Michael Chabon is certainly a talented writer, but here his style lacks sparkle; that he peppers his pages with obscure, word-of-the-day two-bit nouns and adjectives throughout (e.g., "lucubrations," "capacious," "soi-disant," etc.), hardly makes up for an absence of the kind of imaginative, powerhouse writing that can transport a reader into a different world. I'm sure that with its thematic threads involving "imprisonment and escape" and its heavy-handed invocation of the Golem/superhero metaphor throughout the book, there is much fare here for meandering English class discussions regarding "symbolism" and such. But this kind of guessing-game deconstruction of novels has never appealed to me; I prefer direct, imaginative story-telling that keeps me turning the pages as I read and has me re-experiencing the imagery that leaps from the pages long after I have closed the volume for the last time. Sadly, this book inspired neither experience for me.
Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: This is the only book that has ever made me cry. Only a master craftsman can create that kind of connection.
Rating: 
Summary: Chabon Quits When He's Behind
Review: Amazon's received many other detailed reviews of this book I agree with, so my own can be short. I adored this book for the first 400 some-odd pages: I raved, I stayed up late, I fantasized. The book had larger-than-life characters and situations, both in its protagonists and in its "progtanists' protagonists," i.e. the wonderful comic book characters they created. The relationship between Sam & Joe; the mystery of Joe's exotic, beautiful lover, Rosa, and her eccentric, sympathetic father, "Longman." Harry Houdini, Al Smith, Professor Kornblum -- it was all wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. And then THUD: Joe goes to war, ends up in the Arctic, disappears for 10 years, abandons the woman he loves to the man who loves him (Sam) and the book falls apart. I couldn't believe it: a book I started off wanting to never end, I ended up DESPARATELY wanting to finish. This book starts off with a fantastic roar, but ends with an exhausted whimper. I still can't believe how Chabon let that happen.
Rating:
Summary: Dynamic Duo!
Review: Michael Chabon's sprawling, encyclopedic "Kavalier & Clay" tells the shaggy-dog story of Joseph Kavalier, magician, escape-artist, polyglot, artist and renaissance man extraordinaire, who, in 1939, barely escapes the Nazification of his native Czechoslovakia to find refuge in the New York home of Joseph's fast-thinking, street-smart cousin Sammy Clay. The combination of Kavalier's artistry and Clay's pulp-storytelling brilliance inevitably leads to the creation of the houdini-like "Escapist", a superhero character that earns the duo tremendous success in the early 40s heyday of Superman-like comics and radio serials. Over the course of the next fifteen years, the cousins variously discover and lose love, appear and disappear into thin air, battle Nazis both real and imagined, pull of amazing feats of derring do and leap from tall buildings in a single bound, all the while advancing the art form of the comic book. At first glance, the tale appears disjointed, the telling undisciplined; the windup big and the pitch small. But keep your eye on the ball as you read this one, and you'll get the hang of Chabon's tricks. There's a lot of material to absorb, a lot of backtracking and foreshadowing, and the cameos from the world of both high art and low culture (Max Ernst, William Gaines) come fast and furious. As was the case with M. Night Shyamalan's underrated film "Unbreakable", those who regard comics as an unworthy medium likely will be equally dismissive of Chabon's story, which makes no secret of its affection and admiration for the form. Also, Chabon's artful, impressionistic prose may prove to be too much work for the literal-minded: as with comic books themselves, important plot developments occur between installments and in nonchronological order, and it is incumbent upon the reader to fill in much of the missing elements of the story. Careful reading, however, is rewarded: however far afield his story wanders, Chabon holds fast to his themes that art is the embodiment of the artist's deepest unconscious and that heroism and bravery of a superhuman sort can be found in the most lowbrow of creative acts. Okay; if you don't buy that metaphysical book-club hooey, at least it's an entertaing yarn, brainily constructed and richly evocative of the Jewish pop culture milleu of 40s and 50s New York, with something for everyone. There's a witty Dorothy Parker-like sendup of the Dali-worshipping downtown surrealist art scene at the beginning. There's an interesting James Dickeyish man-vs-nature WWII bit in the middle. There's some Cheeveresque suburban dysfunctional family moments at the end. Oh, and there are also some laugh-out-loud lines from Clay and his pals, whom Chabon uses to voice his inner Groucho Marx. Look for Chabon's next exciting installment!
Rating:
Summary: Upon Further Review...
Review: I think I was having a bad day when I wrote my original review. So, after rereading the book, I'm back to rewrite my review. Probably no one but me will ever see it, but no matter. To start with, after reading quite a few Pulitzer winners, "Kavalier & Clay" was more than worthy of the honor. It is, in my humble opinion, the most original, satisfying, and well-written of any of the Pulitzer winners I have read. The story naturally follows Josef (Joe) Kavalier and Samuel Klayman (Sammy Clay) as they achieve fame and glory during the "Golden Age" of comic books in the years before WWII. When the war breaks out, Joe goes off to fight in it, leaving behind his pregnant girlfriend, whom Sammy--a closet homosexual--marries. Joe comes back 12 years later, befriending his son and after a Senate hearing exposes Sammy's lifestyle, he leaves Joe and his wife Rosa behind. The story is mostly good and the writing is superb. Both times I've read this book, I wanted to keep reading and reading; it just sucked me in. Chabon's writing style is at times a little overblown--sometimes I wish he would just get to the point already!--and ranges from witty to philosophical. The dialogue is sharp and the characters (while maybe a little warmed-over from Chabon's other novels) are well-rounded. That all said, a few things bothered me. For me, the story falls apart after Joe goes off to war. My first question was that if Joe wanted to kill Nazis, why did he join the NAVY? Wouldn't the Army, Marines, or Army Air Corps better served his need for vengeance? Maybe he wanted to sink U-boats like the one that torpedoed the ship carrying his brother. Another minor question was why Joe rented space in the Empire State Building to live after he returns to New York. Wouldn't it have been cheaper (and less risk of eviction) to rent an apartment in the city somewhere? The big question, the one that really bothers me is why Rosa married Sammy. The impression I got is that Rosa is a strong, independent woman, not the sort who would care if people would whisper about her being a single mother behind her back. Besides, she could have just said the father died in the war (which was almost true), which I doubt was a situation unique to her. To me, though, she seemed like the kind of person who would say, "my son doesn't need two parents, I can love him enough for both". Sammy and her father still could have helped raise Joe & Rosa's son. Maybe my impression of the character is wrong, or maybe Sammy convinced her to marry him because he didn't want the child to grow up without a father like he did. The problem is that WE DON'T KNOW because the marriage proposal is not detailed in the book, so we're left to draw our own conclusions. I think this is an issue central to the story (or at least the last third or so of it) and if I feel it's contrived by the author as a convenient plot device, that tarnishes my enjoyment of the book. To be honest, I didn't like the last third or so as much as the first two-thirds, where Sammy and Joe are building the Escapist character (among others) while being cheated out of the money that's rightfully theirs by the greedy publisher. Everything after the war seems like a soap opera. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but it reminds of the movie, "Legends of the Fall" where Brad Pitt's character goes off after WWI and returns home years later to find his girl has married his brother. With the questions I mentioned earlier, I really couldn't enjoy this phase of the book much. And like "The Cider House Rules", I hate those disorienting big time shifts. All that aside, the whole book is still much better than most everything else. I highly recommend escaping into Chabon's wonderful world.
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