The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000) Review

"It was, in part, a longing--common enough among the inventors of heroes--to be someone else; to be more than the result of two hundred regimens and scenarios and self-improvement campaigns that always ran afoul of his perennial inability to locate an actual self to be improved."

The opening act of this book is so damn good, you can imagine the author thumping the top of his desk, hollering, "Now, that's how you sell a novel!" Once you can open a book like that, the author has you in their hands for the next 90%, with their job basically being not to drop you. TAAK&C figured out how to effectively balance a near-constant tragic undercurrent with frequent moments of levity.

The youthful energy that powers the first half of the novel peters out as the novel goes on, but who can really fault it for that? After all, the characters aren't their youthful selves at the end. But the climax is also excellent, and if you can nail the opening and closing its easy to forgive a little futzing around in the middle.

The key that I think won this a Pulitzer, is that most books that are this well-written aren't this funny, and most books that are this funny aren't this well-written.