The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

This was a formative novel for me. It was one of the few novels that proved to me that literature today can still aspire to be the next "Moby-Dick", the next "Buddenbrooks", a novel with the scope and the literary quality to be more than just entertainment. None of Michael Chabon's other novels quite compares with this one, but here he touches the realm of the Toni Morrisons and Salman Rushdies. Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay are Jewish cousins, who meet in 1939. Joe just managed to flee from Prague and moves in with Sammy's family in New York City. They start developing a superhero comic strip about "The Escapist" and make it quite big while their private lives are in constant turmoil because of romantic, familial and societal problems. A plot summary cannot do the novel justice, however. Chabon's ways of giving life to the characters and the settings is incredible. Never have I felt as connected to a characters as I have with Sam. Also when I fell asleep after a character apparently had died, I dreamed that it was all just a ruse - I am not sure that any other novel has ever haunted me in my sleep! This is not the most current novel, and it might be too young to be an established classic, but it is one of the best books ever, and especially with the ubiquity of the Marvel universe, this is definitely a novel that is worth reading!

This book started so strong, but managed to loose my interest almost completely within its 640 pages. I almost DNF'd this. I liked getting to know Joe alongside Sammy, Rosa was a breath of fresh air (even though heavily stylized through Joe's lens) and Tom Mayflower was the coolest. What the hell was that pacing though? I constantly had to reorient myself as stories were pushed into stories, a lot was told in flashbacks and big time gaps were added, without in my opinion adding much to the story. The comic book storyline drew me to this book and was honestly to only part, which kept me going.