I'd like to share with all of you a real knockout read that I finished recently -- namely,
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon. Chabon may be best known for his 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a book "about" the golden age of comic books during the World War II. It was a jam-packed book with a full cast of characters, and
Telegraph Avenue is no different on that front.
Telegraph covers the lives of several paired characters (primarily record store owners Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe, their wives and midwifery practitioners Gwen and Aviva, and a pair of young sons, Julie Jaffe and Titus Joyner, Archy's surprise, long-lost son), but the story itself is as much informed by its setting as it is by its people. Telegraph Avenue represents a melting pot neighborhood that joins the traditionally white Berkely with traditional black Oakland. Chabon masterfully encapsulates the major issues of race relations and the survival of tightly-knit communities by infusing them into the world of the story and the daily life of his characters, rather than subjecting us to a full rant. He invokes the spirit of this neighborhood and paints such unique and stunning portraits of its denizens that the book makes for quite an absorbing read, with plenty of pay-off at the end. It is good to know that an author can lay out so many characters and subplots and still weave them together by the novel's end.
Keep reading,
Chris
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