The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

I'm a slow reader, sometimes I have to read a sentence a few times before it will stick. So after middle school I pretty much wrote off reading other than magazines and comic books. I have to say I was caught up in the story about 3 pages in from the 1st chapter. The way the author describes his setting and plot lines, a picture truly forms in your mind. A great story about a young jewish Kavalier escaping nazi controlled Prague, and finds himself in Brooklyn, NY meeting his cousin Klayman(Clay). Both are artist and looking to score on the new craze, the comic book. I guess I never really thought there was anything different than like wizards, love stories, suspense, or crime mysteries. Its inspired me to try and look for more obscure books that I can continue with my new found love of reading, and am on book #3 since reading the multi-award winning "Kavalier and Clay".

This is a wonderful, "filled-to-the-brim" story! I had resisted reading it for years because it was so dense and lengthy looking. Then one day I just picked it up and started it and could not let it go. It is an adventure story, a story of a place and a time in America, a glimpse of the greatness and follies of the comic book industry, a story of families lost and found but not seen, and a very subtle but pervasive picture of the world of NY city during the atrocities of World War 2.

Two cousins unite at a young age and form a block-buster comic team. One is a native New Yorker, the other, an immigrant from Prague who escaped after the Germans' took the city. One man is full of hope and bluster and self doubt; the other is broodingly talented, always looking back at what he has lost and not at what he has.

They are in love with the same woman and when the cousin from Prague disappears with no clues, notes, or warning, he leaves behind his now pregnant girlfriend. He has no idea however as to her condition and when it becomes clear that he will not be returning anytime soon, the cousin from New York City does the honorable thing (and what he had hopelessly hoped for) and marries the girl. It is a loveless marriage, awkward with emotions stirring under the surface, but not to be spoken. The child, a boy, is delightful. But he is puzzled by his relationaship with his father, a situation no one will discuss with him. When he "real" father returns, much is revealed and yet much is also left q question.

The story has great pathos, drama and humor. It is a story in the traditional sense of the word. It draws you in and keeps you wishing and hoping and looking to see what happens. And like life itself, the ultimate story, it ends with tangles, good outcomes, sadness, and a sense of being left behind, wondering where these people are today.

To be fair, I think I'll just say that this book wasn't really my cup of tea. Perhaps having no interest in comic books or their history should have caused me to skip it. Recognizing that, I can appreciate the history, and understand that at least part of my disinterest with the first half of the novel was personal preference. If you share my opinion about comic books, I wouldn't say this book isn't worthwhile reading, just be prepared to skim or entirely skip a handful of pages at a time. I love to read, and I felt like I had to force myself to pick this book up.

There were things I did like. I truly liked Bacon and I enjoyed reading his relationship with Sammy develop. I liked that this pure relationship took place beetween two men. I liked when Joe struggled to define his life and come to terms with it. Most of all, I appreciated the perspective Chabon used to write this novel- that this was more a coming-of-age story than a story about war, or being gay, or making sacrifices. It was refreshing to read something written in the way that life actually happens.

To me, the book ended more strongly than it began- I was far more interested in the growth the characters experienced in their later years, when they were more reasonable and less selfish, than I was in hearing their back story. I don't particularly like Chabon's writing style (his thesaurus words and paragraph-long sentences gave me the distinct impression that he is trying to prove that he's smarter than his readers) and I didn't really like very many of the characters. I felt like a lot of the parts of this 600+ page book were slow-moving and totally unnecessary. On the flip side, I was disappointed when parts I enjoyed ended quickly (Joe's time in the war, for example). I almost felt like Chabon wasted all his tiresome descriptions on the first half of the book and ran out of energy when he hit the middle- maybe that's why I enjoyed the second half more; I definitely felt like it moved faster.

You ever buy a book and then put it on your bookshelf for 3 years, never read it, and then one day get the jones to pick it up. That was my experience with Kavalier and Clay. While I regretted waiting so long to read it, I savored every page as this book allowed me to truly escape the blue period my life was in at the time.

Brilliant. Some of the strongest character development I have read, a quick read even at over 600 pages. Chabon allows you to enter the daily lives of the characters while at the same time painting a broad portrait of a very important time period in our history. It is a view of World War 2 and the post-depression era that passes with just one shot fired. I can't reccommend this book enough.

When I was much younger, I used to think that I may run out of great books to capture my imagination. It is with great pleasure to have read this wonderful, touching and amazing work of fiction. As a reader, i was enthralled with the character development and the sensitivity of writing that carried me through this amazing story. Not only was the plot and writing exceptional, it was informative on the history of comic books. As a child, I was never afraid of running out of them. For me, an exciting author to travel through his other works.