The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Reading Michael Chabon's "Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" is like taking a meandering walk through a neighborhood with someone who grew up there. You are not going to take a direct path from point A to point B, but in stopping and dwelling on the details you learn to see them through the eyes of the characters themselves. It helps to have a dictionary handy too, which surprised me for a tale based largely around comic books. As a die-hard Marvel Comics reader from the 1980s, I was ecstatic that Chabon chose to set the heart of the story in the origins of the Golden Age of Comics. The story from there - the relationship, love, sacrifice, forgiveness, and reuniting that occurs between Sam, Joe and Rosa - is as heartbreaking as any I have read. Each faces their challenges, sometimes devastating, as they pursue happiness among the backdrop of WW2. Five stars.