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Liked It4 of 4 members found this review helpful “I loved this book from beginning to end. I have so many things to say, but nothing quite grasps just how good this was. Kavalier & Clay will stay with me for a long time. Absolutely beautiful. Funny in a way that you must sometimes laugh in the hands that life deals you. True in spirit. Amazing.” see full review » see other reviews » |
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“Like the comic books that animate and inspire it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is both larger than life and of it too. Complete with golems and magic and miraculous escapes and evil nemeses and even hand-to-hand Antarctic battle, it pursues the most important questions of love and war, dreams and art, across pages brimming with longing and hope. Samuel Klayman--self-described little man, city boy, and Jew--first meets Josef Kavalier when his mother shoves him aside in his own bed, telling him to make room for their cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague. It's the beginning, however unlikely, of a beautiful friendship. In short order, Sam's talent for pulp plotting meets Joe's faultless, academy-trained line, and a comic-book superhero is born. A sort of lantern-jawed equalizer clad in dark blue long underwear, the Escapist "roams the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny's chains!" Before they know it, Kavalier and Clay (as Sam Klayman has come to be known) find themselves at the epicenter of comics' golden age.
North Shore Country Day School English-10 wrote this review 11 days ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
But Joe Kavalier is driven by motives far more complex than your average hack. In fact, his first act as a comic-book artist is to deal Hitler a very literal blow. (The cover of the first issue shows the Escapist delivering "an immortal haymaker" onto the Führer's realistically bloody jaw.) In subsequent years, the Escapist and his superhero allies take on the evil Iron Chain and their leader Attila Haxoff--their battles drawn with an intensity that grows more disturbing as Joe's efforts to rescue his family fail. He's fighting their war with brush and ink, Joe thinks, and the idea sustains him long enough to meet the beautiful Rosa Saks, a surrealist artist and surprisingly retrograde muse. But when even that fiction fails him, Joe performs an escape of his own, leaving Rosa and Sammy to pick up the pieces in some increasingly wrong-headed ways.
More amazing adventures follow--but reader, why spoil the fun? Suffice to say, Michael Chabon writes novels like the Escapist busts locks. Previous books such as The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys have prose of equal shimmer and wit, and yet here he seems to have finally found a canvas big enough for his gifts. The whole enterprise seems animated by love: for his alternately deluded, damaged, and painfully sincere characters; for the quirks and curious innocence of tough-talking wartime New York; and, above all, for comics themselves, "the inspirations and lucubrations of five hundred aging boys dreaming as hard as they could." Far from negating such pleasures, the Holocaust's presence in the novel only makes them more pressing. Art, if not capable of actually fighting evil, can at least offer a gesture of defiance and hope--a way out, in other words, of a world gone completely mad. Comic-book critics, Joe notices, dwell on "the pernicious effect, on young minds, of satisfying the desire to escape. As if there could be any more noble or necessary service in life." Indeed. --Mary Park”
0 of 1 members found this review helpful“couldn't finish it...seems like a guys book - read Mysteries of Pittsburgh 15 years ago and liked it (I think!)”
KRISTIN S wrote this review 13 days ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
0 of 1 members found this review helpful“HATED THIS BOOK. REALLY HATED THIS BOOK.”
Emma J wrote this review 2 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
1 of 1 members found this review helpful“I really enjoyed reading this book, and I find that Chabon is a master of the just-enough formula that so few contemporary authors really nail. His writing is thoughtful and poetic without ever being pretentious or exhausting, and his seamless mixing of history, religion, comic books, magic, and personality would have me believing that this book was true if I hadn't found it under the novel section. Also commendable was the non-manipulative level of tragedy; although there is of course sadness and heart-rending events, I never found it unrealistic or overdone. Although I will admit that I got a bit antsy in the last 200 pages, this didn't significantly detract from the book's overall power and humor.”
Stella Nox wrote this review 2 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Deserves more stars!”
Stewart Ellington wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Didn't interest me greatly, but I thought the writing was good.”
Lesley B wrote this review 3 weeks ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Great book. Nice journey that doesn't turn into a soap opera. Believable and intriguing characters. ”
Treble wrote this review Wednesday, November 25 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
0 of 1 members found this review helpful“Its a great adventure!
Jesse D wrote this review Monday, November 23 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Seriously, the first 2/3 are action-packed with adventure but the final 1/3 is a little slow. ”
“Someone convince Chris Crouch that I liked this book. Sort of. :)”
Mark T wrote this review Saturday, November 21 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
