the adventures of kavalier and clay review

The theme is consistent throughout the book in a truly impressive way. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is about escape. That’s the plot of the book, but not what it’s really about. They fight the Nazis vicariously, then Joe signs up to fight them for real, then they have to cope with a world without Nazis and with American post-war paternalistic/paranoid censoring craze. Since this is fiction, their main character is fascinating and their project is phenomenally successful. They both have dreams of making a ton of money and do the logical thing by talking Sam’s boss into starting a line of comics. Joe Kavalier, a trained escape artist and Jew from Prague, endures amusing and compelling adventures to escape the Nazis and join his cousin, Sam Clay (nee Klayman), in New York. The book is set in the years leading up to, during, and after WWII, with a healthy smattering of comics, and it makes excellent, thorough use of its setting. I knew Michael Chabon could turn out a pretty sentence, and I knew that lots of people really liked this particular book, some claiming it was one of those secretly genre books (it’s not), but I didn’t actually expect much from it. This is why I was so pleasantly surprised by The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. There’s not usually much in it – the genre says “character-driven” when they mean, “boring.” Yeah, I read Lit Fic (along with everything else under the sun). Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to talk to you today abotu Lit Fic. My weakness for pretty prose is no secret, but I’m not sure the extent to which I induldge is widely known. There are lots of things in the world worth liking because their form is pretty, even if they completely lack substance or content Easter eggs, Avatar 3D, most boquets.

The adventures of kavalier and clay review