Rating: 
Summary: Had its moments
Review: This is the second Chabon book I've read (the first being Wonderboys). Both books had similiar, distracting sections. In Wonderboys, the Jewish family dinner at Grady Tripp's ex-wife's house was too long and couldn't hold my interest. Same with the Radioman section of this book--with Kavalier in Antartica. The transition was not smooth and it took me a while to realize that he was there for the US military. What an awkward section to struggle through.Certainly, the book had its moments. Escapism from Eastern Europe to the US. That alone is enough for those Pulitzer judges to perk up. Nice themes, and generally a nice-flowing story. Not sure it was really worthy of the Pulitzer and I liked Wonderboys better.
Rating:
Summary: Uneven Epic is Decent Intro to History of Comic Books
Review: Comic book fans & collectors are really split on this one! I say, read it if you don't know a thing about comic book history, but it's not good enough for the old guard. True: it's an engrossing epic that touches on roots of popular comic book culture, especially superheroes. Any comic book fan will totally enjoy the format, which is oriented to the origins of the art itself. Protagonist serves as a metaphor for the golden age of comics, going from refugee escape artist to unsung war hero to battered & bruised survivor of postwar politics. If you treasure, say, the story of Bruce (the Batman) Wayne witnessing the brutal slaying of his parents, the vow to fight crime, you at least have one reason to try reading this book. BUT Many flaws are due to making sweeping broad brushstrokes about origins of comic art, and there are annoyingly erroneous glamorous bits, too. While truly Surrealism and cinema have their influences in comic book art, Chabon places New York comic book artists in an intellectual avant garde milieu and doesn't give enough credit to the more boring commercial art & advertising world that was a kind of spawning ground of many of the best artists. This book is not a factual history, Chabon's proud account of research notwithstanding. As prose alone, there are several nice touches. Chapters of the Antarctic war posting of protagonist are wonderful, engrossing. Bafflingly bad is account of nice if arty Jewish girl in bed with lover, nonchalant as her dad walks in. 1940s? No way, no how! Book is dotted with these embarassments. Frankly, I just hope that the book wins more hearts for the art of the comic book. It may be doing that. It's a fine introduction, a novelty to the as-yet-unconverted. What the heck, all this hooplah helps raise the value of our collections! But there are enough of us old fans who can't abide by the faults...
Rating: 
Summary: Rich and fully satisfying!!!
Review: Since first reading John Irving's The World According to Garp years ago, I have begun every book I read with a small hope that it will be THE ONE to top Garp. (After all once you've found your favorite book, no book after that can fully satisfy.) Hundreds of books later, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon may just be my new favorite book. Joe Kavalier, a Czech Jew, is able to escape from Nazi-occupied Prague for two reasons: first, his artistic gift provides him an opportunity to leave, and second, his gift for stage magic and escapistry allows him to beat the system. He arrives soon after at his cousin Sam Klayman's apartment in New York City. Sam, a small man with crooked legs, an inferiority complex, a tough attitude, and a gift for story-telling, dreams of becoming a creator of great comic books. With Joe's talent for drawing, they create a legend: the Escapist, a classic costumed superhero. Their lives will never be the same. This book is everything you want a book to be. It is FUNNY! Chabon is keenly attuned to the absurdities of life, and it is with great skill that he incorporates these absurdities into the story, in the form of matter-of-fact, this-is-how-the-world-really-is observations of people's idiosyncrasies and relationships, and the small details of both everyday occurrences and freak incidents. The characters are recognizable-they are unique, flawed, and easy to like. Each character is complete; all are given narrative voices, and the reader can sympathize with even the "villains". Like the best books, it will also break your heart, over and over: you hope upon hope that each time Joe and Sam suffer a setback, it will be the last time. A rich, fully satisfying novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay absolutely deserves its Pulitzer Prize. And it should be on everyone's reading list.
Rating: 
Summary: A great but somewhat disappointing American experience
Review: Through the first two thirds of of Kavalier and Klay, Chabon shows a great mastery of the story-telling art. The novel moves with perfect pace and beautifully constructed sentences. Chabon captures much of the American experience of the era, particularly in regards to the immigrant experience. But Chabon gets hung up on a certain element in the last third (I won't reveal exactly what it is, as it is a major plot factor). Consequently the book almost falls apart in my opinion. Chabon hammers the reader over the head with this certain aspect, and it simply becomes annoying. Perhaps others won't view it as large a hinderance as I do, but for me it became too heavy-handed. Overall, I still believe the book is a great accomplishment and a great read for anyone, but it would have benefited from a little more restraint on Chabon's part in the end.
Rating: 
Summary: What was this???
Review: This book was recommended to me by a friend who stated it was one of the finest books she ever read. Perhaps I did not understand the story. I missed the point of the story. I could not relate to the characters. I did not find ir humorous. But did struggle to read it to the end.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Prose, but...
Review: The first 250 pages of this novel are absolutely wonderful--beautifully written, compelling in plotting and characterization, thematically rich. Then, somewhere during the incipient romance with Rosa, between the digressive cameos of Al Smith and Salvador Dali and "Citizen Kane" inspiring Kavalier and Clay, Mr. Chabon lost me...And shortly after that the melodrama was ladled on liberally (the madness of already-lonely men in an isolated exotic locale, viz the scene in Antarctica), which I take it was supposed to resonate against the general themes of illusionism and magic and escape. But for me it didn't work (Not that it won't for you...) When the drive of the strong plot disappeared, and all I was left with was artfully-crafted prose, it became all the more jarring and unsatisfying, I'm sorry to say...
Yet still, this book is way ahead of most of the works of fiction published today, for its ambition and the quality of writing alone.
Rating:
Summary: What went wrong here?
Review: I have been a huge fan of Michael Chabon's books up until this one. It took me a while to get into it and then it took a lot to keep me interested. When I got to the part when Joe was in Alaska with that guy who was skinning the dogs and gluing their fur to the plane, I almost put it down without finishing it. But I had to finish it - I had to see where the story would go from there, and then I was sorely disappointed because I felt that the ending was rushed and wrapped up too neatly. If the part about Joe's time in Alaska had been cut out and more attention paid to the ending and the characters, this would have been a much better book.
Rating:
Summary: Golden Age--cultural studies
Review: The writing is sharp and exciting. Things have changed. People conduct research now in order to write novels. With results such as these, the venture is worthwhile. It is Brooklyn and the main character is named Sammy. He works for Sheldon Anapol at Empire Novelties. A cousin, Josef Kavalier, arrives. A fortune had been spent to enable Josef to leave Prague. When he runs into a snag he he seeks the assistance of an old magician, Bernard Kornblum. He arranges a route through Lithuania in the coffin of a golem. Through a miracle of birth in the Ukraine, Josef is able to emigrate. Josef had wanted to emulate Houdini. At the age of fourteen he started to study under Bernard Kornblum to become an escape artist. Josef reaches the house of Kornblum's brother in law in Vilna. Dutch and Japanese officials are in league. He enters the United States through Kobe. Josef Kavalier and Sam (Klayman) Clay form a team when Sam sees that Joe draws well, having studied at a school of fine arts in Prague. They have a plan for comic books. In 1938 superman appeared. The pair tries to develop a superhero. They establish that the superhero is driven mad by evil. He exists to fight injustice. They envision tights, masks, big muscles. Every golem has been summoned into existence through language. Sammy and Joe complete five pages of the Legend of the Golden Key. The comic book is to be called The Masked Man. The make the Escapist. He is to be Houdini mixed with Robin Hood mixed with Albert Schweitzer. Anapol wants to buy the Escapist. Receiving word of his father's death, Joe has an impulse to join the RAF. He changes his mind and finds himself going to Yorkville and getting into fights. Then he is able to arrange his brother Thomas's passage to America. Joe's girlfriend is Rosa Saks. He becomes noted on the West Side Bar Mitzvah circuit appearing as a magician, the Amazing Cavalieri. Joe thinks the movie CITIZEN KANE represents to the nth degree a blending of images and narration. Sam fears he is on his way to becoming a professional sidekick. Joe's thirteen year old brother has traveled from Moldau to Lisbon. The boat with Thomas in it is torpedoed near the Azores. A sudden storm causes the loss of life. Joe goes off to join the Navy and Rosa goes to Sammy for help to obtain an abortion. Joe listens to the radio. He cannot find out about the fate of the Jews in Czechoslovakia. Joe manages the radio on isolated duty in Antarctica. Rosa marries Sammy. Joe realizes that the son of Sammy and Rosa is acually his son. Joe returns to try to reconnect. He keeps his existence secret until 1953. He conceives of a stunt to fall from the Empire State building. He lands on a ledge on the eighty fourth floor. As befitting cultural studies, Antonia Gaudi and Douglas Sirk and of course many more people are mentioned. In 1954, burdened by a law suit and declining readership, Anapol extinguishes the Escapist. This is an accomplished work. In some respects it is comparable to John Dos Passos's USA. The ending of the book I leave to the reader to discover.
Rating:
Summary: The barely interesting adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Review: Knowing nothing really about comic books prior to reading this book, I must admit that I learned something and found that whole subtext fairly interesting - no issue there, and no grumble about blurring fact and fiction. However, I read this book for its moving story (on the recommendation of many people) and I can't figure out what I missed. The characters were not well developed at all and therefore they were nearly impossible to empathize with or get excited about. At supposedly critical junctures in the plot I found myself mumbling "who cares". The plot skips years at a time, and as it went on and reconnected me with Joe, Sammy and Rosa, I felt that I knew them less than I did earlier in the book. This is all a shame because the storylines and comic book subtext had the makings of a fantastic, heartwrenching novel, but I feel that the author just didn't bring any of it to life. It was a struggle to stay interested enough to finish it, and I can't figure out how this won a Pulitzer Prize. For a story that on its surface has a lot to do with drawing, the protagonists were not well drawn at all. Yawn.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing...absolutely
Review: This novel knocked me over and I still feel the impact.
The intricate weaving of the story into a the actual history of the growth of the comic book industry is flawless. This ambitous tale takes all the elements of love, loss, faith, ambition and reason combines them and delivers them without remorse for any reader that falls behind. I say this because Chabon can take one sentence and put one important aspect of the story in it and never return to it. If you read to fast or loose your spot you may be confused.
Yes he uses big words and yes his story does get long in the tooth, but the execution, the novel as a whole is amazing.
There are so many scenes that I hope, when this book is made into a movie, are not lost.
This novel is for those people who need to be reminded why people are so extraordinary, why friendship is so priceless, why love is devastating and why choices must be made regardless of circumstance.
Read this and keep it with you.
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