Leah Hackman

Ultimately, this story reminded me a lot of True Grit in that it is a very personal adventure story. There isn't a lot of glamour to it; it isn't a story about becoming a hero, or accomplishing the unimaginable, or changing the world they live in. It's really just a meandering journey of two brothers. But I really like the feel of the ending: where usually adventure stories end with the hero achieving some climactic task, leaving the reader to wonder how this character will live now that they've ascended above normalcy, in this story, the “final task” feels almost like a side note, and it is truly the return to normalcy which is the true goal and test for the hero. The reader is left with the satisfaction of knowing exactly how the character will live now that his adventure is over.

It's Sci Fi but it kind of reads like a mystery.The book starts with the stars suddenly “going out” and the rest of the novel has this element of mystery where your'e ultimately digging deeper and deeper and deeper into why this is happening. But unlike a standard mystery novel where you start with a broad cone of hypotheses and then whittle it down until you collapse to a single theory, with this novel you start with a broad band of hypothesis and every time you learn something new it is like the book has said “oh. Yeah. Those were all good ideas. And totally made sense. But you forgot you could look at things from this perspective and now everything looks entirely different... here's a hint.” and your understanding of it all shifts and you have an entirely NEW broad band of hypotheses. So unlike a standard mystery novel where the satisfaction comes from gaining knowledge and narrowing your view of the problem, here the satisfaction comes from having to contort your perspective to see things fresh every time and reshape your theories.

An incredibly lovely book. So sincere—usually books with quirky characters and style like this come off as contrived but this reads so real. It truly is a mystery as well (but more in the sense of life being a great mystery, than some sort of who-done-it), and manages to suspend the reader in that state of thinking they know what is happening but never being quite sure, without feeling as though it is cheating the reader by simply hiding the details. As the wonderful Oddly Flowers says ‘But there is no aha moment. I don't jump out of my seat and say, I've got it, by Jove, I've figured it out. Because you cannot figure out what you already know but don't know you know.'

This book was definitely a fun little romp. Just the right pacing and level of danger, with excitement balanced with the familiar of a kid's routine and family.

On a more critical level, I was impressed (though not surprised, given how well he did this in The curious incident of the dog in the night time) by how well Haddon managed to capture the voice of a kid—their hopes and fears and misunderstandings felt very real to me, and not at all like the affectations of an adult imitating youth.

I want to come back to this after some time has passed but initially my thoughts are conflicted. The novel is such a feat. I cannot imagine the research and self awareness necessary to write this. For a book whose core is the impossibility and violence of translation (both of words and experiences), it has deftly attempted to translate the experiences of these children of colonized nations being transformed and radicalized by the multifaceted violence of their daily lives and their growing awareness of the world and their place in it. You can feel the way the book simultaneously talks to readers who share in the marginalized experience of oppressed and foreign people while also talking to its privileged readers. It's a stunning work in its ambition and its audacity to communicate what the book itself argues cannot be translated.

Where my reservations lie is in the length and pacing of this novel. It may be because I was reading on a deadline, but I found myself struggling with an impatience with the text. A part of me argues with myself that the length of the novel is a necessary tool to enable “translation”. When a word is missing in a language, you turn to longer idioms/metaphors for translation. The idea that the main characters translation was strongest when they could dream in both languages... may argue you need to sit with the characters long enough that you begin to try to think like them, and to dream like them, in order to understand them. If the novel were condensed, maybe this process of absorption/immersion would be lessened, and the inevitability of Robin's journey not earned.

This book makes me think of an episode of this american life that I once listened to which was about fiascos. I recall the episode describing a small-town production of Peter Pan which quickly snowballed from funny, to ridiculous, to a full blown fiasco over the period of one act. The narrator described the change in the audience as the play quickly fell apart—transitioning from a group of sympathetic and encouraging patrons, to slight discomfort for the feelings of the actors, to full out hysteria as the humour of the situation could no longer be denied. This book is a story about one family's fiasco. And towards the end, when the ball is really rolling, it takes on a life of its own. Unfortunately, the build is too slow and puts the reader in the position of discomfort for far too long. I'm not at all surprised by the number of people who stopped me while I was reading this book just to tell me that they had started it but never got into it and put it down without finishing. While I did enjoy the dark comedy of this ultimate fiasco, I don't know if the payout ultimately balances out the initial investment.

I found I could see the author too much in the writing of this book. In spite of having chapters from several different characters perspectives, it never quite got to the point where I was hearing several different voices. Everyone's voice felt too similar, and that seems almost impressive when you consider this means a 9-year old boy who “was tested with inconclusive results for aspergers” at times has a voice similar to a 70-something year old woman. Unfortunately, the author's overwhelming voice also sometimes over-steps into being overly-saccharine.; the text seems to have too many with “deep-thoughts (tm)”, where introspection too-often moralizes.

That being said, I enjoyed this book more than I expected to. The two parallel stories were engaging and the imagery in parts was lovely. I was also comfortable with how the text incorporated September 11th in the story, which was a concern I had when starting the novel.

I think this is a book best described as cute. Everything is a little overly simplistic: the characters are too flat, the jokes are a bit too on the nose, the plot is overly predictable, and the representation of canadian politics a little too black and white. But, still the book remains cute, and the author does not commit the egregious sin of presenting the book as something it is not and so I can't hold any of the books faults against it.

One of my favourite comic series is Astro City, a series that has the audacity to make the city and its people the central character as opposed the superheroes as is the norm. Starman manages to do an excellent job of blending the typical superhero focus and this broader city-focussed narrative style. From the get go, Opal city and the non-super inhabitants become major players in Starman's adventures and it makes the book all the richer. In one of the included question sections from the old issues, Robinson discusses how the illustrator Harris has a clear vision for the skyline of Opal city, and an idea of what all the neighbourhoods look like etc. and you can really tell. Very quickly, you begin to know Opal city. It feels familiar—and not just because it kind of reminds me of Portland. And the final climactic story of this volume is very interestingly retold through several issues from the perspective of different characters, giving us a sense of how many different people around the city interpret the chaos that super villains create.

I do have one complaint with the text and that is that Robinson can sometimes verge on pretentious. I love an argument about which Sondheim musical is best mid fight just as much as anyone, but these little moments sometimes come off as forced—the author is peaking through a little too much and it feels overly indulgent. But it's easy to read past some of this missteps as the work on a whole is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

I think the most amazing thing about Michael Chabon books is how he takes genre fiction and creates a work which is simultaneously such a faithful and true expression of the tropes and mores of that genre, and yet his language, the settings, and the characters he creates are so lush and unexpected that the novel is so unexpected, surprising and joyous. There's something fantastical about his novels that I find myself using words like adore in reference to them (and while normally that would make me grumpy, I just can't stay mad at such a cheeky little book).