The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

By: Michael Chabon

Narrated by: David Colacci

Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2001

It's 1939, in New York City. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat: smuggling himself out of Hitler's Prague. He's looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a partner in creating the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book.

Inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams, Kavalier and Clay create the Escapist, the Monitor, and the otherworldly Mistress of the Night, Luna Moth, inspired by the beautiful Rosa Saks, who will become linked by powerful ties to both men. The golden age of comic books has begun, even as the shadow of Hitler falls across Europe.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a stunning novel of endless comic invention and unforgettable characters, written in the exhilarating prose that has led critics to compare Michael Chabon to Cheever and Nabokov. In Joe Kavalier, Chabon has created a hero for the century.

©2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc. (P)2000 Michael Chabon

Critic reviews

"Michael Chabon can write like a magical spider, effortlessly spinning out elaborate webs of words that ensnare the reader with their beauty and their style." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)

Excellent story and narration

I fully enjoyed this book and hated to have it end. The story is brilliantly created from beginning to end.

A tapestry of an alternative family life

The Amazing Adventures of K & C is an extraordinary look at at rare collaborative business friendship. Two cousins play their artistic strengths off each other during a tumultuous few decades in America and Europe. Chabon gives us a tantalizing view of comic book creativity and the scrappy publishing industry that exploited it prior to WWII in his tale of two enterprising cousins trying to imagine an American dream. But it is Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay’s loves and losses that invest us in the story.

David Colacci inhabits and enlivens each character.

Still a winner

Reread and I loved it every bit as much the second time around. Highly recommend for the great writing, story and characters.

Great Writer with a LOOOONG book...

Other than being way too long, this was a pretty good book! I really like the ending and felt a great affection for the characters by then. The writing was terrific. Chabon's is great at characterization. His use of imagery is fantastic, as evidenced by this passage about Rosa's letters to Joe after he left her.

"(Joe)... took out the thick sheaf of letters that he had received from Rosa after his enlistment at the end of 1941. The letters had followed him, irregularly but steadily, from basic training at Newport, Rhode Island, to the navy's polar training station at Thule, Greenland, to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he had spent the fall of 1943 as the Kelvinator mission was assembled. After that, as no reply from their addressee was ever forthcoming, there had been no more letters. Her correspondence had been like the pumping of a heart into a severed artery, wild and incessant at first, then slowing with a kind of muscular reluctance to a stream that became a trickle and finally ceased; the heart had stopped."

The history of comic books in America was interesting, and I liked the way he connected a variety of themes to that history. Mostly, these themes centered on the idea of ESCAPE. For example, Chabon showed Sammy and Joe working tirelessly for the Jews' escape from Hitler's bondage in their "The Escapist" comic books, Sammy finding himself and beginning to escape the bonds of America's prejudices toward gays, and Joe escaping from his "survivor guilt" after his immigration to America as well as working for his little brother's escape from Prague, and also Joe's escape from Rosa after what happens to Tommy.

Chabon showed a caustic sense of humor, too. For example when the name of the bedroom assigned to the gay lovers is revealed as "Ramcock." There were lots more examples, and I chuckled out loud quite a few times.

I felt so touched by the close bonds between the main characters at the end and they way they dealt with the way their lives had unfolded. I just wish Chabon had left out the whole episode of Joe enlisting in the Navy and traveling to Antarctica. That was over the top and way too drawn out. Other episodes could have been edited out or cut down as well, and then the book would have made a bigger impact. (You're probably thinking the same thing about this review, if you got this far :)

Not too much going on for this length

narration was good but the story drags on and the subject was just interesting enough for me

A dramatic window on comic books and publishing

I came to this book after learning of Chabon's Star Trek connection. And being interested in how things came about, such as heroes, comic books, marketing of same, etc, I found this book quite satisfying. In the light of other non-fiction readings on the subject, the basis of this novel seems quite plausible. The story line kept me listening even though I usually avoid such long books. The only reason I did not give it 5 stars is that I have a rule against doing that when an author tells me what's going on inside someone's pants.

Great story. Ruined by grotesque story of anal sex

The story of Jews involved in early history of WW2 era comic books is well told and read. Ruined by anal sex followed by oral sex.

Not bad at all, if shallow

I have mixed feelings about this book.
The parts that are about comics, the history of comics, various plots, how they were created, the work that went into it, the evolution (and sometimes revolution) -- all these are absolutely fantastic.
The parts that are about living people are OK.
The parts that have to do with modern history are... well, shallow and weak. They show that the author wrote them from reading about stuff, and not giving it much thought.
Finally, the whole homosexuality-related subplot feels like it's been forcibly introduced to gain the corresponding recognition and audience: it doesn't read as a necessary plot device, but rather as a political shtick. In my opinion, etc. etc., obviously.

The Comic Book Plots were the Best Part

I enjoyed the novel, but found the ending to be a little lacking. I'd recommend this book, but it was not as good as I anticipated. As my headline said, the most interesting parts were when the comic book plots were described. Sometimes I wished the entire novel was that interesting. I anticipated that the development of the graphic novel would come into play at the end of the book. I guess you have to extrapolate on your own that it does.

I really didn’t want it to end like that, I’ll have to think more about it

I loved this. Oh so much because it inspired me enlightened me and gave me insight and because it was a great ride. I recommend it to anyone.