The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Full of action and well written.

Well, this book is so deserving of 5 stars, BUT it's just a little too long. I wanted it to end before it did, unfortunately. The story is wonderful, and what a great idea to tell the story of comics in such a way that keeps a non-comic reading reader interested. I think this book is better than [b:The Yiddish Policemen's Union 16703 The Yiddish Policemen's Union Michael Chabon http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178032098s/16703.jpg 95855], and that one is the one that won all the awards.

It has been a long, long time since I have laughed aloud so often and so heartily while reading.

A wonderful story of two boys trying to make their way in what is now the Golden Age of comics, navigating being poor, immigrants, Jewish, and human.

More of a 3.5, but rounded up for benefit of the doubt. Lost me a bit in the last 150 pages with Joe's decision and the time jump.

Reading Michael Chabon's "Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" is like taking a meandering walk through a neighborhood with someone who grew up there. You are not going to take a direct path from point A to point B, but in stopping and dwelling on the details you learn to see them through the eyes of the characters themselves. It helps to have a dictionary handy too, which surprised me for a tale based largely around comic books. As a die-hard Marvel Comics reader from the 1980s, I was ecstatic that Chabon chose to set the heart of the story in the origins of the Golden Age of Comics. The story from there - the relationship, love, sacrifice, forgiveness, and reuniting that occurs between Sam, Joe and Rosa - is as heartbreaking as any I have read. Each faces their challenges, sometimes devastating, as they pursue happiness among the backdrop of WW2. Five stars.

This is a lovely (not an adjective I use, but most appropriate I can think of), satisfying book. There are parts I didn't like as much (I was uninterested in the narration of comics stories, but there wasn't too much of that), but to not give this 5 stars just feels disingenuous.

Some of this was brilliant and some of this felt like slower miles in an ultramarathon.

They don't give out Pulitzers for just anything

Whew, it only took me a month to finish this behemoth! Yeah, it probably could have been shorter, but every time I picked it up, I was completely immersed in the lives of Joe and Sammy and Rosa, and attempts to get Joe's family out of Nazi-occupied Prague, and Joe's escapist tendencies and thirst for revenge, and the comics industry that served as a backdrop for it all. And sure, Chabon occasionally irritated me with his vocabulary, but I mostly got over that within a few pages of getting suckered back into the story. 4.5 stars.

3.5

Made me even less interested in being a magician.

I'm not even sure how to describe this book. It is at the same time a love letter to comics, a sad story about WW2, an epic about the life of very singular and intense characters, a story about family values and relationships and do much more.
The book is big and you need to take your time with it. A lot of work has gone in this book to create such an exciting universe, so will depicted in vivid details.
It is rare to encounter such a complete masterpiece that is also extremely polished and easy to consume, because among other things this book is a lesson of writing style.

Just effing goed. Holy moly.

This novel was released in 2001, then subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize. I admired Chabon's previous books and I began to read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay a few years ago after reading Wonder Boys (I absolutely LOVED Wonder Boys). But I had to put Kavalier & Clay down at the time because, mostly, I didn't have the necessary attention span for it. There is a density and intricacy to Chabon's sentences that require a certain amount of reader fortitude; a distracted mind will not find comfort in his prose. This time around, I found this novel to be a very enjoyable read and a marvelous book. It certainly deserves the praise and accolades it has received.

Here's this novel's brief description: Joe Kavalier, a young Jewish artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdini-esque escape, has just smuggled himself out of Nazi-invaded Prague and landed in New York City. His Brooklyn cousin Sammy Clay is looking for a partner to create heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit America - the comic book. Drawing on their own fears and dreams, Kavalier and Clay create the Escapist and Luna Moth, inspired by the beautiful Rosa Saks, who will become linked by powerful ties to both men.

If you are familiar with this era of the Comic Book Golden Age (1930s – 50s), then some of this story will seem a little familiar. Kavalier and Clay serendipitously propose and create a comic book hero called The Escapist for a disinterested businessman. He agrees to publish their comic book after learning of the popularity of Superman and the like and has them sign a boilerplate contract where their creation belongs to his company. This was commonplace at the time as a business practice. But when their creation becomes immensely popular, the creators are left out of the bulk of the wealth, having signed the ownership over to the company; many comic book creators during that time suffered the same fate, like Superman's creators Siegel and Shuster. Kavalier and Clay did make some nice dough as paid employees, but the owner received most of the fortune (millions of dollars). This part of the novel was meticulously told and Chabon's discussions with comic book legends Will Eisner, Stan Lee, and Gil Kane (as revealed in the novel's Author's Notes) bore great literary fruit.

After finishing this book, one of the more interesting aspects of the novel to me was Kavalier's background as an illusionist's understudy and the different levels this played out in the narrative. Obviously, his background in magic and escapism was an inspiration to the character of the Escapist. Chabon also reveals his great love for magic and sleight-of-hand, not only with enhancing Kavalier's personality and mode of operation, but with writing this novel. A good third of the novel reveals Kavalier's adeptness at vanishing, whether for self-preservation or to get what he wants. But ultimately, it's Chabon's sleight-of-hand that propels the narrative. Many, many times, there were moments where I couldn't believe that something was going to happen to Kavalier or Clay, then find out in subsequent chapters that what I feared was going to happen actually didn't happen. But Chabon's coup de grâce, his grand finale—literally in the last sentence of the book—is the revelation that the title of the novel may not be about who you thought it was. It was an amazing feat of literary perfection.

I only had a couple of issues with this novel. 1) Chabon can sometimes be a bit... long-winded. He has a peculiar habit of traipsing down asides like he has other stories he really wants to tell but shouldn't. And, as I said earlier, there is a density and intricacy to his prose that requires a certain amount of reader stamina and attention. 2) The content of the entirety of Part V of the novel is superfluous. If the almost 50 pages had been summarized in 5 pages, then the other 45 pages wouldn't have been missed—at all. After finishing the novel, I realized that this section of the novel (as unnecessary as it seemed content-wise at the time) was another bit of sleight-at-hand from Chabon, enhancing the powerful revelation in the last chapter. These two issues are quibbles, though.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a fantastic novel and well-worth the read. Funny, endearing, magical, and exquisitely written, I highly recommend it.

Fantastic book.

My first (only?) Chabon. I really liked the start, and occasional further sections sparked but, overall, I found it incredibly disappointing.

Some time ago there was this guy wanting to write, but he has no patience and also no willingness, is that a word?, to think about many types of necessary story parts, like dialogs and different putting into scene moments, so eventually he decided to just enjoy more or less great shit written by others. And there is plenty... more or less great.
But this one it is well done, well cooked all around, nice everything, nice mood, nice and patiently put into scene and also nice chosen era and thema, like ww2 and comics. I enjoy good comics although no coloured clothes wearing super hero type.
It is a story that I enjoyed plenty, and the author has skills and vocabulary :)
What I want to say is that I can enjoy also not only Kafka or Nabokov but less skilled and verse in language fellow writers but this one it is skilled in that direction, I felt good just because of the chosen phrasing. Loved it. Is great ;)

Historical fiction at its finest (assuming, of course, that it's fair to call the events of 60 years ago “history”). Chabon mines the real-life origins of comic books to craft a story of two young men trying to rise up out of the Bronx and to leave a mark on the world around them. If you're familiar with the biographies of Siegel and Shuster, Simon and Kirby, Will Eisner, or Stan Lee, a lot of the events of this book will feel familiar, but Chabon mixes them with enough artistry and flourish that they take on a life of their own, and the ways in which the creators' lives are reflected in the heroes they create give a gravitas to their four-colour creations that wouldn't be seen in actual comic heroes for decades after the time this is set.

Loved the first half, but it gradually became a little too far fetched, domestic, and reflective. Some of the themes were also quite tired, but the comic-related content evoked a wonderful nostalgia.

The writing was quite good. The story started out quite good, it kind of fizzled out towards the end, though.

This is one of those books that is written very well, but just isn't mine to love. You know what I mean, right? The plot is expertly orchestrated, the characters are interesting, the language is vivid, and the pacing is not bad, but overall I was frankly bored with the story. My lack of excitement was particularly evident in the first hundred pages or so and the last couple hundred. You can probably attribute it to my indifference to comic books and my misgivings about WWII-based lit. Where the book shined, I thought, was in those pages where Sammy and Joe are navigating the business, learning about each other and themselves, when they're discovered love and testing their convictions. I would've been just as pleased—though slightly taken aback—had the book ended with Part Four.

All that being said, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was great for a good three-hundred pages in the middle. Outside of that, I cannot in good conscience say it wasn't well written. Therefore, think of my four-star rating not so much as “I rather enjoyed this book,” but more as an acknowledgment of the skill involved. It may be slightly misleading, but I do hate to give low ratings to books that in no way deserve it.

I listened to the unabridged audio version of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay—mostly in the car but sometimes at the gym. I haven't been going to the gym much lately, so it took a really long time to get through the book, which is 500 pages but feels longer. I liked it very much. I knew before I started it that it was about comic book creators, but I didn't realize what its underlying themes were. The largest of those themes is escape—Joseph Kavalier's escape from the Nazis, his escape from the gloom of the war and his family's death, his escape from Antarctica, and Sammy's escape from the lie he lives. And of course there is the comic book character they create: The Escapist, a figure inspired by Joe's training as a magician and escape artist in his native Prague.

See my full review: Review of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Such a wonderful engaging plot and setting. The Golden Age of comics, New York, the plight of Jews during World War 2. Two young protagonists, dreamers who have energy and faith in their shared dream. Stage magic, smoke and mirrors sparking imagination that leads to “The” comic strip, fortune, and the possibility of rescue from tyranny. The pogroms and the Final Solution are a major plot element but barely referenced. Fascism fought through superhero comics and in a nice touch in a couple of places that fantasy world merges for Kavalier with his world as if Kavalier is inhabiting his creation the Escapist. The culture of New York in the years pre-entry to WW2 and the actual history of the rise of the comic book are featured strongly. Who actually made any money out of the industry is often questioned, many writers and artists and their creations name-dropped but every time it is raised it's soon smoothed over. That issue is still alive for comic artists from the new age 1960s onwards. As I write, writers are taking issue with Disney corporation over Copywrite payments owed.
It's mostly a breezy read in its opening chapters as befits a standard adventure novel but what is happening off stage cannot fail to cast a pail over the heroes of the title.
Pulitzer Prize-winner 2001

Book Review: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon - I finally got around to reading this 2001 Pulitzer prize winning book. Great book. My only issue is the ending. I was a bit irritated by how badly things were going around 2/3 of the way through. And then how nicely things were wrapped up at the end. But I loved Chabon's writing and will definitely pick up more books by him.

Click through for the full review on my blog at http://bookwi.se/kavalier-clay/

I found the book unnecessarily wordy and hard to read at times, but overall enjoyed the story.

I guess I was expecting a book more about comics, and less about other things, but by the end was attached to the characters and eager to find out how things would end.