READ THIS BOOK! It is beautiful and moving and poignant and funny and epic and destructive and emotional and wondrous and uplifting and crushing and brilliant and excellently-researched and absorbing and monstrous and great!
The book charts the rise to success of Josef Kavalier, a Czech Jew who escapes persecution prior to the Second World War to New York, and his American cousin Sam Clay. They are both 17, and combine Sam's imagination with Joe's artistic talent to start making comics. Their first success is with The Escapist, a comic that Chabon invented in keeping with those that abounded at the rise of the graphic novel in the 30s and 40s. (The book did so well that a real life version of The Escapist was written)
The plot is rife with twists and turns, and both Joe and Sam share a fair amount of ups and downs as they go from naive, idealistic cartoonists to powerful creative forces in the American graphic novel market. There's more than a fair share of heartbreak as well; any story that is bookended by the Second World War comes with a liberal dose of pathos. It's here that Chabon manages the story best. While his research of New York of the 30s and 40s is astounding, and one really starts to wonder if The Escapist did not in fact exist as a comic, it's the little details and the emotions of his characters that evoke a smile and more than once, a tear. Ultimately it's a heart-rending story about so many things it would be trite to start listing them. But it leaves one with the calm of a post-emotional breakdown and the joy of the resilience of the human spirit. Uplifting.
"that was totally wicked!"
*****
by Michael Chabon
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