The League of the Golden Key
I've finally managed to finish another book, so I finally have an update for the blog. The latest is Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and though it's a pretty long book it's one of the best novels I've ever read. I picked up this book on the strength of the general sense that "they" liked it, and a guy at the book fair where I bought it saw it in my hands and told me I had to read it. Over six months later, I finally got to it, and he was right. Bare none, this book is awesome.
Part of what I love about Chabon is his inexplicable ability to make me care about a topic I have absolutely no interest in - comic books. But inside his book, he creates this unbelievable world that just sucks you in completely. The book centers around two cousins, Sammy Clay and Josef (Joe) Kavalier, and the relationship between them as they create a series of memorable comic book characters in pre-WWII New York. Joe is a recent emigre, smuggled to the U.S. in a coffin to escape the German army as it marches on Prague. Eventually arriving at his cousin's home, the two embark on an odyssey through the then-nascent world of comic books with Sammy as writer and Joe as illustrator. The characters they create express the feelings that can find no other outlet - rage against the German occupation that severed Joe from his family, the love for a passionate Surrealist artist, the fear of the unknown as seen by an immigrant.
Chabon absolutely knocks this one out of the park - his writing is by turns humorous, exciting, and poigniant. The relationships between the characters are engaging without being a deliberately manipulative roller coaster of emotions, and the rich evocation of pre-war NYC is completely compelling. I'm having a hard time putting the superlatives into words; this book is just that good.
And best of all, he had this cute little snippet about my chosen profession (now earmarked in my copy for posterity): "Poor little librarians of the world, those girls, secretly lovely, their looks forever marred by the cruelty of a pair of big black glasses!"
Part of what I love about Chabon is his inexplicable ability to make me care about a topic I have absolutely no interest in - comic books. But inside his book, he creates this unbelievable world that just sucks you in completely. The book centers around two cousins, Sammy Clay and Josef (Joe) Kavalier, and the relationship between them as they create a series of memorable comic book characters in pre-WWII New York. Joe is a recent emigre, smuggled to the U.S. in a coffin to escape the German army as it marches on Prague. Eventually arriving at his cousin's home, the two embark on an odyssey through the then-nascent world of comic books with Sammy as writer and Joe as illustrator. The characters they create express the feelings that can find no other outlet - rage against the German occupation that severed Joe from his family, the love for a passionate Surrealist artist, the fear of the unknown as seen by an immigrant.
Chabon absolutely knocks this one out of the park - his writing is by turns humorous, exciting, and poigniant. The relationships between the characters are engaging without being a deliberately manipulative roller coaster of emotions, and the rich evocation of pre-war NYC is completely compelling. I'm having a hard time putting the superlatives into words; this book is just that good.
And best of all, he had this cute little snippet about my chosen profession (now earmarked in my copy for posterity): "Poor little librarians of the world, those girls, secretly lovely, their looks forever marred by the cruelty of a pair of big black glasses!"
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