The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

1930's: New York. Asleep in his bed, Sammy Klayman wakes when his mother introduces him to a distant cousin from Prague. The young man's name is Joseph Kavalier, and having just escaped from his Nazi oppressors and left his family behind, he's trying to find a way to make the money that will bring them to him in New York. With Sammy's knack for telling stories and Joe's talent with a pencil, the boys begin creating comics-dramatically altering the form, becoming small mountains of success, and forever changing their lives in the process.

In The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon writes a tale that is not only sprawling but immediately engrossing. His richness of detail, his extensive knowledge, and his deeper understanding of the human heart make this book arguably one of the quickest six-hundred page reads you can find.

Not surprisingly, the bonds of family and love lie neatly at the heart of this novel. Sammy and Joe hold each other up through their partnership, and as Joe must deal with the idea that he will never see his family again and the pressure of perhaps starting his own, his struggles run parallel with Sammy's personal struggle with his budding homosexuality. Nothing is clich?: the characters intentions, thoughts, and actions come off as completely genuine, and worth our time as readers. Ultimately, though the characters deserve much better than they end up with, Chabon makes it so that the fame the boys had in their youth (but wouldn't after the war), was never what they were honestly chasing.

This is one of those rare novels where the last chapter is a complete throw away: you'll likely spend your time reading it lamenting the fact that this marvel of a book is almost finished, and, to these characters, you'll have to say goodbye.