Random House Trade The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Last year I booked to attend an interview with Michael Chabon at the British Library tomorrow night and wanted to read something he'd written before I went. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay won Chabon the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2001 and it was absolutely fantastic!Josef Kavalier escapes from Czechoslovakia at the start of WWII and arrives at the house of his aunt and cousin Ethel and Sam Clayman in New York with revenge against the Nazis in his heart and extraordinary talent in his fingertips. The novel traces the cousins' lives through their growing friendship and their artistic partnership in the era of comic books during the 1940s and 50s. Chabon cleverly switches between chapters that explore the relationship between the two cousins and those that tell the story from one or the other's point of view in immersive and wonderful detail - I thought that this created a really rich and layered story with believably flawed characters. Chabon maintains the momentum throughout as well and despite this being a long read (600+ pages of close type), I felt utterly compelled to turn page after page after page. A great literary adventure.

Kavalier and Clay are cousins who first meet as (very) young men in 1939. Kavalier has escaped from Prague (we learn the details) while Clay's background is also sketched: polio and a largely absent father. They work in the comic book business with great success and form their first attachments to others. War comes and Kavalier serves as a radio operator in the Antarctic. They are finally reunited in the McCarthyite 1950s.The novel is highly episodic but with recurring themes notably magic and escapist artistry. It's highly inventive and always keeps you guessing - and full of clever things. If I didn't ultimately warm to it, that's because I think I found the behaviours and decision taking of the central characters very hard to fathom. Perhaps we are not meant to understand Jisef but just go along for the ride...

This is a wonderful read, a top notch yarn about escape and people bound by their chains. Joe Kavalier escapes from the Nazis in the coffin of the Prague Golem, and winds up in Brooklyn. He befriends his cousin Sam, and the two of them create a comic book character, the Escapist to fight the Nazis for them.Having read it over a decade ago, I did not recall all the plot points, so it was very enjoyable throughout. You can read it as a ripping yarn, an analogy for the plight of Jews during and after the war, and not worry too much about how deep it is. For me. this is Chabon's second best book, behind the recent Telegraph Avenue - which is better written, and just as entertaining.Chabon's three early books have a homosexual character and storyline, and the one is K&C is central to the plot. I am not sure why he does this, but I am glad he doesn't do it anymore. It does not detract in any way from the tale, but it is peculiar that he felt compelled to include this 'twist.' Here, it makes sense.For my money, this would make an amazing film, but it would be a long and bumpy one. Perhaps not, better as a book. If you haven't read it, you won't be disappointed, but you must be patient. It's long.

Joe Kavalier and his partner Sammy Clay, are comic-book creatives in New York just before America joined WWII. The novel opens with the story of Joe's journey to America which is full of danger. From the very beginning Joe is a young man who flirts with catastrophe. He almost fails to get to America in the first place, when he is stranded in Prague. Joe is shipped out on an illegal transport, hidden in the coffin of the Golem of Prague. It means a long and perilous journey, but he makes it and turns up at the house of his aunt in New York, where he meets his cousin Sammy Klaymann, who later shortens his name to Clay. This story spans the war years and a little beyond. It is often heart-breaking, often exciting, and full of wonderful insight, especially about the place of comic books in American fiction. The stories are always about human beings, however, and this is no one-theme book. The adventures of these two admirable, though very different, men, touch on the themes of war (with a breath-taking struggle for survival in the Arctic for Joe who joins the Navy as soon as America enters the war), the striving of the boys to get improvements in their pay as all their work is indentured to their employer, love (of course), and the theme of escape. More than anything else, perhaps, escape is the touchstone, especially of Joe's early life, as he begins to learn of the exploits of Houdini, and yearns to follow in his footsteps. As with everything else, early exploits almost lead to disaster, and this too adds to the charm, sometimes rather naive, of the book. This is an enjoyable read which encompasses most of the defining moments of two lives. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 20001 - an achievement richly deserved.

The first three quarters of this novel is excellent with elements of magic realism mixed in with a tale set in Prague and New York. I found the last quarter a bit annoying when the actions of one of the main characters seemed out of character. I also suspect that Michael Chabon didn't know how to end the story as he ties things up in a most unsatisfactory manner.