Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: A Novel

Pros: Comic book artists defeat Nazi villains in the year s best book.

Cons: Adolf Hitler probably wouldn t like it.

The Bottom Line: From the author of Wonder Boys comes a truly wonderful literary experience dazzling-bright prose that continues to thrill after the last page is turned.

Review: If, as Francis Bacon said, some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested, then have your knife and fork ready to dig into Michael Chabon?s delicious novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier &...

Pros: Complex, deftly-constructed parallel universes of real world despair and comic book fantasy. Catchy, creative, memorable.

Cons: Way too long and occasionally rambling. Editor? Is there an editor in the house?

The Bottom Line: Passages of astounding cleverness and evocative writing, likeable and memorable characters. Also, too much of a good thing that bogs down by its sheer length. But stay with it.

Review: ?ONLY THE SHADOW KNOWS?.
In 1939 Europe black clouds shroud the countryside as hobnailed Nazi boots spread the despair born of ethnic genocide and megalomania.

Meanwhile, back in bustling, rainy New York City, we shift our...

Pros: A dazzling story told in beautiful prose and featuring a cast of memorable characters.

Cons: When there's a movie version, it almost certainly can't be as good.

The Bottom Line: This delightful novel won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Anyone who reads it knows that it richly deserves the honor.

Review: Comic book creators have given us wonders, from a wisecracking man who crawls walls like a spider to a philosophizing extraterrestrial who soars through the cosmos on a silver surf board. It would be hard to find in all of literature a character...

Pros: Characterization, setting, themes, all perfectly contained in this 600-page novel

Cons: Absolutely NONE.

The Bottom Line: The best book I've read in a long time.

Review: I love to read. I always have. I can remember loading up my arms and grocery sacks with books at libraries from the time I was just a pup. When I was in high school I was very into Literature, with a Capital "L," and John Steinbeck was my favorite...

Pros: Captures America in its infancy, a treat for even non-comic book fans (like me)

Cons: Overlong in moments

The Bottom Line: An entertaining tour through the American Dream, with comic books acting as your most able of guides

Review: A faster read than a Grisham book. More powerful than an Oprah pick. Able to win Pulitzer Prizes in a single bound edition. Look! Up on the bookshelf! It's pulp fiction! It's serious literature! It's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay! Yes...

Pros: Elegant language, wonderful characterization, gripping story

Cons: A bit rambling at parts, and a somewhat abrupt ending

The Bottom Line: Absolutely recommended, because it's outstanding in all ways.

Review: I always approach books like this with caution. The ones that have a little gold medallion on the front and say, "The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novel," or something like that. You know the type. I like to think it's because I've been disappointed by...

Pros: Compelling and varied story that keeps you coming back for more

Cons: At over 600 pages, it's quite a commitment for most people

The Bottom Line: A great mixture of historical fiction, adventure, disillusionment, and redemption. Plus, it won the Pulitzer Prize, so it can't be all that bad.

Review: Comic books are chiefly about escaping from reality. The costumed super heroes and over-the-top villains allow the reader to get away from the drudgery and everyday problems of real life. Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Amazing...

Pros: A fantastic book that takes you back in time.

Cons: None

The Bottom Line: This book offers it all in spades. Comic fans will be thrilled. All others will be drawn in as well, thinking of their long lost collections.

Review: For many people a book does nothing more than tell a story. But for a reader who enjoys books more than most, a novel can take you places in both time and location. It can open up worlds of wonder most of us have never or will never experience. For...

Pros: Its lexigraphic verbosity.

Cons: The Golem. He creeps me out.

The Bottom Line: Worth its weight in matzoh balls.

Review: Isn't it great to read with a book in one hand and a dictionary in the other? Especially when the book has even more heft than the dictionary. Unless of course you are trying to eat an ice cream.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay...

Pros: Great characters, interesting period and theme

Cons: Execrable ending

The Bottom Line: A great novel, marred by the ending, but saved by the characters

Review: Josef Kavalier is a young Jewish refuge, dislocated to America thanks to the encroaching viciousness of the Nazi regime in his home country of czechoslovakia. Sammy Klayman is his cousin, a dreamer, a thinker, a boy who lives more in the world of...