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A review by criticalgayze
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
I try to be objective in my star rating, and the plot in the final two sections gets muddled, which leads one to have to deduct a little bit. However, on a second read, I don't come to this book for plot, I come to Kavalier & Clay for character. For character, there are few that do it better than Chabon.
Coming to my second time with this book after reading Andrea Long Chu's forthcoming Authority in which is published her Pulitzer Prize-winning "Hanya's Boys," I could not help but compare this book to A Little Life, which I tried and failed to reread last year. Kav & Clay and A Little Life (ALL) have a lot to say to each other - they are, at their heart, two New York stories that focus on dis/abled gay men and their immigrant (or first generation, in the case of ALL) partners.
The difference between the two, and what generally elevates Chabon on all occasions to the pantheon of the greats, is that Chabon has a love and fascination with our characters. He has to follow them everywhere and fills the text with their personalities. Further, while Yanagihara can paint an image like few others, Chabon can give you a phrase that illuminates a page. (Take, for example, such stunners as "frightfully good" and "wishful figments.")
To be a well-rounded critic, Parts V & VI are messy. Part V hits the breaks hard of the forward momentum of rushing years Chabon has acclimated the reader to in order to spend a couple of months with Joe Kavalier in the bleak tundra of 1940s Antarctica in what feels like the early shadows of Dan Simmons's 2007 novel The Terror, and the book does not really pick up its pace until we return to the world of comics with the incorporations of the real life Senate hearings of 1954 on the impact of comics on America's youth.
But these problems all seemed lesser on the second read. Even the ending, which I felt left the reader in a weird state of limbo when I read this book in 2020, struck me as brilliant this time. Chabon creates this beautiful symmetry where we open on an entrance and end on an exit, and this theatre teacher and director can't ask for much more than that to create a perfect scene.
Coming to my second time with this book after reading Andrea Long Chu's forthcoming Authority in which is published her Pulitzer Prize-winning "Hanya's Boys," I could not help but compare this book to A Little Life, which I tried and failed to reread last year. Kav & Clay and A Little Life (ALL) have a lot to say to each other - they are, at their heart, two New York stories that focus on dis/abled gay men and their immigrant (or first generation, in the case of ALL) partners.
The difference between the two, and what generally elevates Chabon on all occasions to the pantheon of the greats, is that Chabon has a love and fascination with our characters. He has to follow them everywhere and fills the text with their personalities. Further, while Yanagihara can paint an image like few others, Chabon can give you a phrase that illuminates a page. (Take, for example, such stunners as "frightfully good" and "wishful figments.")
To be a well-rounded critic, Parts V & VI are messy. Part V hits the breaks hard of the forward momentum of rushing years Chabon has acclimated the reader to in order to spend a couple of months with Joe Kavalier in the bleak tundra of 1940s Antarctica in what feels like the early shadows of Dan Simmons's 2007 novel The Terror, and the book does not really pick up its pace until we return to the world of comics with the incorporations of the real life Senate hearings of 1954 on the impact of comics on America's youth.
But these problems all seemed lesser on the second read. Even the ending, which I felt left the reader in a weird state of limbo when I read this book in 2020, struck me as brilliant this time. Chabon creates this beautiful symmetry where we open on an entrance and end on an exit, and this theatre teacher and director can't ask for much more than that to create a perfect scene.