This one has been sitting on my shelf for so long that I don’t even remember what first drew me to it. All I know is that when work dried up back in December, I figured I might as well pick up a nice, thick book to pass the time through the holidays. Not sure where that time went, but I somehow ended up not having as much time to read as I had thought I would, so it took me longer than I expected to finish this one. It didn’t help that I came down with a terrible cold last month and was too sick to read for a while.
But I never felt like this book was dragging or that I was impatient to be finished with it. On the contrary, I was surprised and disappointed to find myself approaching the end. I loved hanging out with these characters.
The book starts in 1939. Joseph Kavalier is the oldest of two boys and his parents have decided that, if their life savings can only get one of them out of Prague as the Nazi’s take over, it should be Joe. Despite making sure ahead of time that all his paperwork is in order, the Nazi’s like to change the rules without warning, so his passage is denied. He can’t face admitting to his parents that their life savings was wasted so he ends up at the house of his former magic teacher who helps smuggle him to America.
In New York City, he is sent to his poor aunt’s house, and she promptly puts him to bed with her son, Sam Klayman, who’s about the same age as Joe.
Sam discovers Joe is a talented artist, and comic books have just started to take off, so he decides he and Joe should cash in.
Sam works for a company that does advertisements for whoopie cushions and he manages to convince his boss to give him and Joe a shot at creating a comic book featuring a superhero in the style of Superman.
Sam is very convincing, so after some negotiations, the boss agrees. Sam turns out to be an excellent storyteller with a knack for identifying the elements of a character that draw people in. He and Joe turn out to be a dream team and they deliver on their promise to make their bosses very rich and then some. They make a fortune themselves, but because they don’t own the rights to their own creation, their bosses get the better end of the deal by far.
The rest of the book is about the American Dream, America’s successes and failures leading up to and during World War II, the bromance between Sam and Joe, as well as their respective romances.
As much as I enjoyed this book, there were some sexist elements that irked me. Aside from Sam’s mom and grandmother, the only woman given any page time is Rosa, who serves as a sex symbol. The first time we see her she’s lying naked and unconscious on her bed.
Although Chabon pays lip service to the fact that she’s a talented artist in her own right, he also says that her raison d’être is to witness Joe’s brilliance as an artist 🤢
Later, Sam gives her a job inking comic books for him because she’s more talented and reliable than anyone working for him and Chabon goes on for pages about how grateful she is to him for giving her the job. Does he spend as much time on how grateful Sam was to have her save his ass at work? Or how grateful Sam was to his first boss for paying him to write comic books? Of course not. Because men expect to be given opportunities whereas women are supposed to be grateful for getting less.
This book is also an extremely whitewashed version of NYC in the 1940s and ‘50s, but it’s so beautifully written that I can’t be mad at it. I still give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.