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Saturday, February 11, 2017

Michael Chabon, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY

I started this book about ten years ago and--for some reason--set it aside. After reading Chabon's *Moonglow* last month, I thought, hm, maybe I'll give it another try. I have NO IDEA what I didn't see the first time around. This book is big-hearted, beautifully written, by turns playful (without being writerly "clever") and poignant without being cloying. Six hundred pages of type that is so small I had to use cheaters, but I couldn't put it down. After the second day of reading, I started dreaming about it.

Young Sammy Klayman lives in Brooklyn in the late 1930s; his cousin Josef Kavalier barely escapes from Czechoslovakia as the borders close under the Nazis, and makes his way to Brooklyn. Together the boys become a comic book-writing team, evolve as artists, and survive WWII and heartbreaking loss. But this synopsis doesn't do the book justice. Think magic (Houdini, not Harry Potter), comic books, censorship, friendship, war, love, loss, homosexuality, anti-Semitism, forgiveness, secrets. 

A don't miss.

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