Memphis Reads Archive

Fiction/Genre: Coming of Age Gay & Lesbian

Sharon Evrard reviews THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY by Michael Chabon (Random House, 2000):

It all began one night in Brooklyn in 1939. Sammy Klayman was trying to sleep when his mother told him to move over and make room for his cousin, Joseph Kavalier from Prague. Sammy had known that he had relatives in Europe, but had never dreamed he would meet one of them, much less share his narrow bed with one. Sammy finds to his delight that he has met a soulmate in his cousin Joseph. Both of them love drawing and escapism and both are looking for a means to make their way in the world. Sammy wants to escape Brooklyn; Joseph wants to help his family come to the new world from their old world, which is breaking apart. Through Sammy's storytelling and Joseph's drawing skills, and not without a certain amount of bluffing, the young men find themselves entering the world of comic books. "Superman" comics first made their appearance in the past year and opened the "golden age of comics." As the years pass, the war in Europe explodes, the business of comics takes off and the two men find themselves in a new world, both an inner world of discovery and an external world of change.


Sharon Evrard, Cordova Branch Library