Book Review: THE AMAZING ADVENTURES of KAVALIER & CLAY, by Michael Chabon

I never quite know how to take it when somebody admits that, while they didn't enjoy a particular book, I might. In the case of KAVALIER & CLAY, two separate people, in two very different circumstances, said exactly that: "I didn't care for it much, but you might."

Hmm.

The funny thing is, I really did. I loved KAVALIER & CLAY, and could not put it down for all of the four days it took me to tear through the whole book--the characters were completely engrossing, even when they (quite realistically) did things that I did not agree with and rather wished that they hadn't done. The scope of the book is tremendous, and when Chabon could have potentially lost my attention (Pearl Harbor) he held me fast by introducing a whole other fascinating plot line.

KAVALIER & CLAY is chock full of comic books--the Golden Age of, the history of, the Rise & Fall of comic books--and vivid depictions of the artwork of Joe Kavalier, so beautifully described that I could see the panels of The Escapist and Luna Moth.

For this big, all-reaching book Chabon was awarded the Pulitzer, and though I loved KAVALIER & CLAY and could not find a thing to criticize, I wonder what it was he was given the Pulitzer for--I'd be curious to find the critieria the judges used, because I was not certain that KAVALIER & CLAY was that grand. Perhaps it was something about capturing America in the midst of a war, and chronicling the attitude of Americans through the stories they choose to read--maybe something about an immigrant succeeding in America (living the Great American Dream), but at a great cost?

In which case, then yes, KAVALIER & CLAY was quite deserving.

RATING: 4

Book Review: ACCORDIAN CRIMES, by Annie Proulx

You're probably familiar with Annie Proulx's stories, if not her name--after all, she wrote the short story that Brokeback Mountain was based on. She wrote (and won a Pulitzer for) the novel The Shipping News, which has also been made into a movie. Now, before I get into ACCORDIAN CRIMES, I want to say a word or two about The Shipping News, which I read and sort of liked, or didn't really like, or appreciated certain aspects of at certain times, but mostly found depressing in the heaviest, most lead-weight-upon-my-shoulders sort of way, and ultimately would say that Proulx's writing knocked my socks off but goodness, could she please lighten up a little.

ACCORDIAN CRIMES, published something like nine years after The Shipping News (there were other books published in between, but I've yet to read them), took all my favorite aspects of Shipping, polished them up, gave them a fantastic story to tell and let 'em loose.

Following a little green two-row accordian through its arrival in America, in the hands of of its Italian maker, and through all of its successive owners, Proulx offers a lovely framework for telling of America's beginnings through the polkas, waltzes and zydeco tunes of German, Polish, Mexican, Norwegian, Cajun, French, Irish (and more) immigrants. For each culture, the accordian is a rememberance of home, a way of connecting briefly with whatever land the immigrants have left behind.

There are two things about ACCORDIAN CRIMES that stand out to me most:
1) The racism, the blatant hostility that arises between the immigrants (the Germans hate the Irish, the Americans hate everybody and everybody hates the blacks).
2) The wildly creative ways that Proulx comes up with to kill off characters. I began to get a little excited toward the end of each chapter to see how she'd knock off this guy.
Okay, well, really there are 3) things. Proulx's Pulitzer-worthy prose. I loved that.

RATING: 4