Book Review of the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Published to nearly unanimous praise, Kavalier & Clay takes the reader into the mean streets of Pre-and-Post WW2 Brooklyn through the Golden Age of comic books. The novel follows the lives of two cousins: Joe Kavalier, a Czech artist and recent immigrant to New York, and Sam Clay, a 17-year-old Brooklyn-born Jewish writer.

Both have common interests in Magic and drawing which leads them to employment as illustrators at a novelty products company. With the recent success of Superman, both boys are driven to create the next big superhero. They give birth to The Escapist, an anti-fascist superhero reminiscent of Captain America and Harry Houdini. The Escapist grows in popularity, but sadly the boys get a smaller share of the profit than the publisher. The boys do not fully realize that they are being exploited by their publisher, as they have problems larger than their Escapist troubles.

Kavalier is attempting to rescue his family from the Nazis in Europe, while Clay is struggling with his experimental homosexuality. Knowing he can do nothing to help his family in New York, Kavalier leaves his pregnant girlfriend Rosa to enlist in the Navy and sails home. When he returns, he finds Clay has coupled with his post-pregnancy girlfriend. Kavalier and Clay now struggle with their new family dynamic and with the desire to forward their careers as comic book artists.

Chabon is a master of American literature, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is considered his magnum opus. The book unearths so much of what we all desire to be, and what we all ultimately settle for. Not everyone can be famous, and Chabon illustrates this with dignity and realism, countering it with thoughts of whimsy and wishful dreams. The character of Kavalier is so heartbreaking from start to finish, you can’t help but want him to come to terms with his life and to find peace, all the while he make it a struggle as his domineering and isolating attitude push you away.

While The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a broad, sweeping eleven year epic of a novel, it is worth the time it takes to sit down and dedicate yourself to the character development, despite its slow initial climb.