The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Michael Chabon, Picador, US$10.20 for paperback on www.amazon.com
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2001, this is the perfect book for a long-haul flight. Ranging across continents and decades and containing everything from escapologists and comic book artists to real-life characters such as Salvador Dali and Orson Welles having walk-on cameos, it’s a wonderful read. The title characters – Czech-born Joe Kavalier and New York-born Sam Clay are Jewish cousins reunited once Joe flees from Prague (leaving his family behind), and together they create The Escapist, a comic book character who joins Superman in the Golden Age of comics.
Chabon is a superb writer. Page after page flows by as he interests you in subjects you previously had no knowledge of, and makes familiar what you’ve never experienced. In part this is rags to riches
and back to rags tale, but it is also uniquely America, and Jewish American. The tragedy is powered by Nazism and war; the triumphs come from the hard work and talent of the two protagonists. You want them to succeed and as they take New York and then America by storm, it is a thrilling ride.
Reservations? A few with regards to characterisation and plotting, but nothing gets in the way of the powerful narrative. It can seem at times that Chabon is determined for his characters to either encounter experience or represent every event occurring in both America and Europe during those years. And possibly, it is a book more likely to appeal to men: superheroes, comic books, homosexuality, the nature of friendship, absent brothers and fathers, war and what it means to be a true hero – but it’s an irresistible draw and there is much sensitivity both in the story and in the descriptions.
The film of the book is being made directed by Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliott, The Hours) and is scheduled for release later this year. It’s hard to believe you could fit so much action into a two-hour film, better to save it for a long-haul flight, a couple of jet-lag sleepless nights and a return journey. Escapism for time away from home.
Tom Otley
