Blogger ate the original write up of this book, so it looks like I have to do it again. Thank goodness, when I reread it I realized it wasn't very good.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
In 2001 this book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I work under the notion that not every book that wins an award is worth reading. (Remember my write up of Jellicoe Road? That book won a Printz Award in 2009. It's tripe.) However, the heaps of praise that surrounds this book is justified. Michael Chabon's mastery of the English language is astonishing. The book feels less like a long form novel and more like avant-garde poetry. Here's an example:
I've been reading long enough to understand that writing well and crafting a story are two totally different skills. Chabon is gifted with both. The plot of Kavalier and Clay is epic in scope, lovely in details, heart breaking, and life affirming all at the same time. It's also centralized around comic books. What's not to love?
I'm going to encourage my readers to pick up this novel for summer reading. It clocks in right around 600 pages. I realize that not everyone can complete a novel of that length in a week it's read time is faster than most.
My next book is The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. I'm a quarter though it, and I think a great companion book to it would be Packing for Mars.
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*The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, copyright © 2000 by Michael Chabon (Picador, a division of St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2000, p 47)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
In 2001 this book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I work under the notion that not every book that wins an award is worth reading. (Remember my write up of Jellicoe Road? That book won a Printz Award in 2009. It's tripe.) However, the heaps of praise that surrounds this book is justified. Michael Chabon's mastery of the English language is astonishing. The book feels less like a long form novel and more like avant-garde poetry. Here's an example:
She had just come home from her last night on a two-week graveyard rotation at Bellevue, where she worked as a psychiatric nurse. The stale breath of the hospital was on her, but the open throat of her uniform gave off a faint whiff of the lavender water in which she bathed her tiny frame. The natural fragrance of her body was a spicy, angry smell like that of fresh pencil shavings.*
I've been reading long enough to understand that writing well and crafting a story are two totally different skills. Chabon is gifted with both. The plot of Kavalier and Clay is epic in scope, lovely in details, heart breaking, and life affirming all at the same time. It's also centralized around comic books. What's not to love?
I'm going to encourage my readers to pick up this novel for summer reading. It clocks in right around 600 pages. I realize that not everyone can complete a novel of that length in a week it's read time is faster than most.
My next book is The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. I'm a quarter though it, and I think a great companion book to it would be Packing for Mars.
*The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, copyright © 2000 by Michael Chabon (Picador, a division of St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2000, p 47)
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