Rating: 
Summary: Chabon's Best
Review: This is most definitely Chabon's most mature and enjoyable work. "Wonder Boys" is a fun, engaging read, but seems to have been authored by another person. Chabon's use of language and imagery in this book is unparalleled. Despite the book's thick length and tiny print, I did not want to stop reading this novel. The characters are all well drawn out, and are three dimensional. Of particular interest to me as a kid who loved comics was seeing how much the charcters own lives affected the creation of their comic books. Brilliant. Chabon so wisely uses real and imagined heros of the comic business that even though I know the book is fiction, started wondering where I could find these amazing comics.The books only flaw is about the last 100 pages where the narrative begins to drag. Also, the introduction of a young kid feels a bit intrusive. While the child is a major plot element, it just feels too late in the game to introduce a new character with whom we are supposed to become involved with. However, the rest of the book is just so enjoyable, so fun (yes surprsingly serious and solemn at parts) that I hope this book continues to be read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Long Hard Circuitous Journey
Review: I had to force myself to get through this book. The beginning captured me, the middle 300 pages nearly killed me. The characters were unsympathetic and I found the story line inconsistent and filled with scenes that did not fit nor add to the book. There is an entire segment where Kavalier is posted in Antarctica during WWII. Although I could see how it might fit, overall this segment was incongruous.
After pages and pages of angst and emotion, suddenly something major would occur - usually something somewhat strange. I think the author had a difficult time deciding whether he wanted to write fantasy or straight fiction. Mr. Chabon also had an annoying habit of writing circuitously. He would tell what had happened in about three sentences, then spend 35 pages re-telling it. In the uncertainty between fiction and fantasy I got to the point where I was happy to see Kavalier and Klay head off into the sunset. The sunset they rode off into was as unnatural and unbelievable as most of the book. With the exception of a few flurries of brilliant writing and the opening few chapters, I did not find this book worth the effort of over 600 pages.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun & Insightful
Review: I was a bit hesitant when I picked this up, but Chabon quickly snared me with his story of two early creators in comics. A quick read, full of surprises and energy. I'll definitely be picking up more of his work, and it has piqued my curiosity about the early days of comic books.
Rating:
Summary: Comic Books and World Wars!!!
Review: When it comes to fiction, my tastes usually run to Sci-Fi, but my book club chose this book and I was amazingly surprised(pun intended)! Michael Chabon uses the real world of WWII and Comics
to bring his fictional characters to life. You feel what Josef feels as he escapes from Nazi occupied Prague and joins his cousin and partner Sammy in New York. You wish you were at the party with Harkoo and Salvadore Dali and that you could see the Empire Comics studio as the boys are weaving their magic.
The story is believeable and the setting is unforgetable.
This book is a must read!!
Rating:
Summary: A novel that begins well but goes nowhere
Review: This book rests on floor next to my couch, 2/3 read, and I doubt I'll finish it. It's about two Jewish cousins, one having recently fled Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, the other a native of Brooklyn, who create a comic book character that lives out their dream of beating up the Nazis. It started out well. It successfully fooled me into believing that it had an interesting plot. But by mid-book, the plot had fizzled, the suspense was entirely gone, and there were still about 200 pages left. I found that the novel failed to give me a good reason to be interested in the main characters. This novel turned out to be what they call a "coming of age" story, where the whole point of the book is to watch a couple of young men grow up. I suppose it's the kind of story that appeals to authoritarian types who want to "build character" in everyone, and delight in reading about two boys as they develop their own character (ironic since neither of them could participate in the biggest character building experience of the time, World War II). I've spent my life resenting such people, so there's no way I'm going to like this book. A comparable, and just as pointless, novel is A Separate Peace. It gets two stars because the style is excellent, and the stories of Joe Kavalier's escape from Czechoslovakia and the birth of The Escapist comic books are worth something.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible
Review: This book is truly deserving of all the acclaim and awards it has received. I would never have thought I could enjoy a book as much as I did this one. Everything about this book was so well done and gripping - truly a book that compels you to keep reading; not so much as to just simply see what happens next, but because each chapter is just simply a joy to read. The early stages of the story are two young men creating their comic book dreams and it is as simple and straight forward as that, but as the story moves on, it expands into the unfolding lives of Kavalier & Clay and how it is almost sad to watch the characters and the story become so much more that the creation of Empire Comics. The tale spans a 20 year period, and during those years the reader experiences much to smile about, as well as muttering an exasperated '...damn...' under your breath in horror a few times.
This is one of my favorite books of all time I think I can safely say.
Rating:
Summary: This one deserves the awards
Review: This is such a skillfully told tale of love, loss and redemption, epically sweeping across generations, continents, world events and social mores, that in the end I felt that I, like the story's main characters, had undergone some profound transformation. The book's three primary characters -- Kavalier, Clay and Rosa -- form an intriguing and completely plausible love triangle. Yet the conflicts and tension evident throughout the book have nothing to do with the triangle itself, even as every event is filtered through it. There are really three successive backdrops against which the story plays: the burgeoning pre-war comic book trade, World War II and post-war suburbia. As might be expected, the first two settings provide a seemingly endless supply of compelling minor characters and events, all of which serve to establish the three main characters and set up their principal conflicts. The third setting is, in many ways, a creative coup on par with the groundbreaking artistry practiced by the main characters themselves; that is, a beige and almost formless background against which the characters' dramatic transformations and resolutions can stand out in stark and colorful contrast. I was really impressed by the way the fictional Kavalier and Clay were not only worked into actual comic industry history, but actually helped put it in a social context I had not previously considered. I loved the descriptions of how they worked together: how they created characters, how they developed stories, and how they complemented each other in their endless battles with management. And while the characters, conflicts and resolutions are the core of what makes this book succeed, I loved all of the ancillary stuff as well: Kavalier's obsession with magic and escapism; the transition of their comic creations to radio shows; a New York City that morphs into Gotham and Metropolis and Empire City; a rollicking artists' community; and the author's use of footnotes to lend the book a greater, almost documentary-level authority. This book absolutely deserved the Pulitzer, as well as the Pen/Faulkner and pretty much any other award they were handing out in 2000. It is absorbing and enlightening, and filled with action, romance and suspense. I loved every page of it.
Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate Escape
Review: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is simply... amazing. The fluid writing, the artfully self-tortured characters, the intricate plot, and the historical setting all mix for an adventure that is impossible to escape from. "Escape" is the overall theme here, and Chabon ultimately makes poignant commentary on the impossibility of escaping self -- the truth of who you are -- no matter how hard you run from it. A review of this book cannot do it justice. It rendered me speechless. Upon finishing, I literally had to spend the afternoon by myself just to ponder and grieve it's finality. Chabon's Pulitzer Prize is well-deserved. Please do your imagination a favor and read this book today!!!
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable but this one has some problems....
Review: One of the things that jumped out at me is that it must not have been a good year for fiction when this won the Pulitzer. That's not to say this is a bad read because it isn't but those who compare this to Dickens obviously haven't read Dickens in a long, long time. The one thing that was a hallmark of Dickens was his incredible ability to paint a detailed picture in the most simplistic terms. This is far from what I experienced with K&C. In fact I was startled by the lack of brevity in the descriptive prose in some of the most benign situations. My enjoyment was derived from the backdrop concerning the birth of the propaganda comic book during WWII. Those that held power over the work of Kavalier and Clay were actually some of the most interesting characters. Sometimes, far more than the main characters of this frequently plodding novel. Overall I enjoyed this work but I have to admit that there were just some things about it that didn't add up. Maybe I'm being too particular but how was it that K&C, being painted up as geniuses, could not gain more control over their work instead of constantly backing down to their publisher's bluff? It certainly could not have been the fear of losing a paycheck as it appears that they lived like dogs. How was it that Joe joins the US Army and yet there was never a mention of him even gaining his US citizenship? Did we enlist Czech refugees off the street during WWII and did we give them intelligence positions? Sammy is a homosexual and yet there was really no conflict along these lines until he almost went to jail for it? And why would he marry Joe's sweetheart Rosa? With the social and personal dynamics so apparent, never was this really analyzed or examined. Alot of these unexplained situations tumble out through the pages without thorough study and toward the end I realize that I really don't know that much about these characters and after awhile I began to care even less. To involve the reader in the characters, an author must either relate the character to the reader or make the reader feel what it would feel like to be in the character's shoes. I never really felt any of this throughout because Chabon never gave me a chance to. Joe finds out his kid brother has just perished by the hands of a U-boat and we're not hosted to one minute of Joe's pain the moment he finds out about it. Instead, it's explained to us through other people's eyes thus insulating us from the impact of the scene entirely. So why did I forge ahead? I guess I've always marveled (excuse the pun) over the history of the comic book and it's unlikely rise. However, I did find the success of The Escapist a little hard to swallow but I felt closer to him then the people creating him.
Rating: 
Summary: Not life-changing, but worth the read.
Review: When I read this book, I didn't even know that it had won the Pulitzer Prize--there's no trace of that information anywhere on the library hardback that I read. So I was blissfully unaware that I was reading what was supposed to be a Literary Masterpiece, and I would have been surprised if I had known. There's no doubt that Michael Chabon is a master of his craft; his writing is a mix of the matter-of-fact and flights of fantasy, and often reality is granted an additional glow of the magical. His characters are real from the start: Sammy, Joe, Ethel and Kornblum are not talking heads, but characters who are distinct and touching in their fallibility. Probably the best aspect of this book is where it deals with art, and art and escapism are themes that are tightly woven throughout this story until they become inseparable. At first art is the means to manipulate one's personal reality, as Joe convinces himself that he is fighting the war against the Nazis by having his hero fight them in the comics; and later this idea is carried further, so that art is not only used to manipulate reality, but to escape it utterly; and this is viewed as the ultimate goal of the artist. Another high point of the novel is its moments in which the blend of art and realism are so seamless that at first it is difficult to tell where reality ends and the art begins. These moments are consistent with the magical atmosphere that marks Kavalier and Clay's "Golden Age," as well as with the theme of art as a means of escape. The theme of art and its relationship with escapism is the one theme that threads consistently throughout the novel. Otherwise, one might say that "Kavalier and Clay," for all its strong points, is lacking in that after the tight, virtuoso beginning, the story loses focus and eventually all sense of unity. The plot becomes somewhat convoluted in the manner of John Irving, as if Chabon is throwing oddities into the mix just to keep things interesting. Hence we get Antarctica, the oddball marriage, and the threatened jump from the Empire State Building, which feel as if they are taking place in a world apart from the rich world to which we were originally introduced as readers, which was in itself so compelling. The result is that one begins to wonder where the original story went, if this is the same book, and to wish that it had ended before the pure magic of the atmosphere became replaced with coincidence and contrived circumstance. Another drawback to this book was Joe Kavalier himself, who was simply too much of a good thing, especially in contrast to Sammy Clay. Just when it seemed that there was nothing else that Joe could possibly be good at, something else came out to prove that assumption wrong. In comparison, Sammy comes across as a failure: his talent for writing is never vindicated in the way that Joe's talent for drawing is vindicated to the hilt from beginning to end; yet the original idea for the Escapist came from Sammy, so clearly he is not a wholly insignificant talent. If Joe was meant to seem perfect and Sammy a failure, then this is not a drawback but a fact; but my sense of it was that somewhere, Sammy's story simply fell by the wayside to make way for Joe's. As a reader, I found Sammy a more interesting character precisely because nothing came easily to him and because he was so conflicted in every aspect of his life. Many times I found it strange that he was so unappreciated while Joe had center stage, yet this dynamic was never commented upon in the book, as if the author didn't notice it himself. Without giving anything away, the ending was a climax of banality, and not a particularly realistic one at that. It is as if the author became tired and just wanted to get it over with--a common occurrence, but a bit hard to take after the epic scale of this novel had seemed to promise so much. While "Kavalier and Clay" is worth the read, it leaves lacunae to tease the reader, like a detailed painting that trails away into emptiness.
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