Review: Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon

Title: Telegraph Avenue

Author: Michael Chabon
Publication Date: September 11, 2012
Publisher: Harper Collins
Genre: Adult Contemporary Fiction
Find It: Goodreads, Amazon, B&N, Book Depository
Source: ARC from publisher received at ALA

As the summer of 2004 draws to a close, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are still hanging in there—longtime friends, bandmates, and co-regents of Brokeland Records, a kingdom of used vinyl located in the borderlands of Berkeley and Oakland. Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, two semi-legendary midwives who have welcomed more than a thousand newly minted citizens into the dented utopia at whose heart—half tavern, half temple—stands Brokeland.

When ex-NFL quarterback Gibson Goode, the fifth-richest black man in America, announces plans to build his latest Dogpile megastore on a nearby stretch of Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy fear it means certain doom for their vulnerable little enterprise. Meanwhile, Aviva and Gwen also find themselves caught up in a battle for their professional existence, one that tests the limits of their friendship. Adding another layer of complication to the couples' already tangled lives is the surprise appearance of Titus Joyner, the teenage son Archy has never acknowledged and the love of fifteen-year-old Julius Jaffe's life.

An intimate epic, a NorCal Middlemarch set to the funky beat of classic vinyl soul-jazz and pulsing with a virtuosic, pyrotechnical style all its own, Telegraph Avenue is the great American novel we've been waiting for. Generous, imaginative, funny, moving, thrilling, humane, and triumphant.

The year is 2004 and it’s a time of change for the inhabitants and merchants of Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, CA. Archie Stallings and Nat Jaffe are a dying breed, barely keeping the doors of Brokeland Records open. Brokeland is one of the last holdouts to the digital age - an oasis of vinyl - and is a popular neighborhood haunt. But a proposal for a megastore puts Brokeland in jeopardy and unearths some dirty secrets long kept hidden.

I picked up Telegraph Avenue with hope and a little bit of trepidation. Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is one of my all time favorite books. It was the book that first brought Chabon to my attention and I have read most of his books since then hoping to find that magic that I found with Kavalier & Clay. Telegraph Avenue piqued my interest not only because it was written by Chabon but also because music plays a large role in it (I love music and work in the music industry) and is also set a mere 35 miles from my hometown. Perhaps my expectations were too high but, while Telegraph Avenue was a unique book, I can't really say that I enjoyed it.

One of my biggest problems with the book were the characters in it. For one, there were a lot of them. The book jumps frequently from one character to the next and I found that it took me quite a while to get everyone straight. I also had a really hard time connecting with any of them. I especially had issues with Archy, who acted like an ass through most of the book. I didn’t understand any of his motivations and felt that he got off pretty easy, given the circumstances. Luther Stallings, a former blaxploitation star who has fallen on hard times, was probably the most compelling character though he, too, is very one-dimensional. The other characters, while interesting (yes, I am using that word a lot in this review), didn’t elicit any strong feelings from me.

Chabon’s writing, while showing great skill, was cumbersome. I felt my eyes glazing over during some of the really long, detailed passages. I also had to look up a lot of words, some of which my Kindle did not even recognize. I know I am no scholar but it really takes me out of a book if I have to look up a word every few pages or have to re-read a passage to understand what is going on. Surprisingly, one of the easiest passages for me to read was Chapter 3, which consists of a single 12-page sentence. But I see no point in such a passage except as a literary exercise. While all of this shows how skilled a writer Chabon is, it only served to bog down the already slow plot.

Amidst all of the metaphor and florid description, there is a story in here about the changing world and the loss of community and identity due to corporate takeover. I found the colorful cast of characters intriguing, but I felt like we only scratched the surface with them. Chabon does a good job of creating a believable setting and I really felt like I was strolling the streets of Oakland with these characters.

None of Chabon's subsequent books has managed to capture me the way that Kavalier & Clay did and perhaps it's not fair to expect them to. Though this book was a little hard to get through, I am glad that I read it. It feels like an accomplishment and I am pretty proud of myself for reading the 12-page sentence and understanding it. I am still a fan of Chabon’s work and will read his next book, but I don’t think I would recommend Telegraph Avenue except to die hard fans.

*I received this book free of charge from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This, in no way, affected my opinion or review of this book.

This review is part of the paperback release book tour for Telegraph Avenue. Many thanks to TLC Book Tours for having me on the tour. For the full tour schedule please visit the website here.

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Visit the author online at michaelchabon.com and on his Facebook page.

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What In God's Name - Review

What In God's Name by Simon Rich 

Publication date: 07 August 2012 by Reagan Arthur Books

ISBN 10/13: 0316133736 | 9780316133739
Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Book Depository | Indiebound

Category: Adult Fiction
Keywords: Fiction, satire, religion, God
Format: Hardcover, eBook
Source: Library

Thuy's Review:

What In God’s Name is a funny and irreverent look at what the world would be like if God ran Heaven as a corporation. As CEO of Heaven, Inc., God has an entire staff of Angels on hand to handle His Earthly affairs. Unfortunately, He is more interested in the Yankees and getting Lynyrd Skynyrd back together than with the plight of humanity. One day God decides to retire and focus on his real passion – an Asian Fusion restaurant – and sets out to destroy the Earth and its human inhabitants in 30 days’ time. While most of Heaven, Inc. is ecstatic about not having to go to work anymore, Craig and Eliza, two Angels in the Miracles department, don’t want to see the humanity go. So they make a deal with God. If they can make two hopeless people fall in love before the 30 days are up, God agrees call off Armageddon.

I picked up this book on a whim after spotting it at my local library. I’d read a good review of it somewhere and thought that the premise was really original. God is like Michael Scott from The Office and Eliza and Craig are Jim and Pam, just trying to hold things together. After too many years of working in an office, some of the situations in the book are painfully familiar. I found Craig and Eliza to be very likable characters. They both want to do a good job and make a difference in people’s lives, unlike God and the other angels. That kind of earnestness is refreshing. I also really liked the idea that there were thousands of “potential miracles” waiting to happen every day, and that even a small thing could become a miracle in someone’s eyes.

The romance that Eliza and Craig are supposed to facilitate involves the two most awkward and clueless love interests you've probably ever met. They were actually so clueless as to be a little unbelievable, but it makes the point. Meanwhile Craig and Eliza are having their own romance issues. I guess even angels find dating a challenge.

This was a cute read but the story was very predictable and, ultimately, forgettable. I don’t think it’s as original as it wants to be. That said, I definitely think you’ll get a few laughs out of it. I’d recommend this to fans of Christopher Moore and religious satire.

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Visit the author's Goodreads page. 

The Understory - Review

The Understory by Elizabeth Leiknes

Publication date: 01 June 2012 by Bancroft Press

ISBN 10/13: 1610880498 | 9781610880497
Goodreads | Amazon | B&N

Category: Adult Contemporary Romance/Literary Fiction
Keywords: Romance, contemporary, crossover
Format: Hardcover, eBook
Source: e-ARC received from Netgalley

Synopsis from Goodreads (edited for length):

Story Easton knows the first line of every book, but never the last.

She never cries, but she fakes it beautifully.

And at night, she escapes from the failure of her own life by breaking into the homes of others, and feeling, for a short while, like a different, better person.

But one night, as an uninvited guest in someone's empty room, she discovers a story sadder than her own: a boy named Cooper Payne, whose dream of visiting the Amazon rainforest and discovering the moonflower from his favorite book, Once Upon a Moonflower, died alongside his father.

For reasons even she doesn't entirely understand, Story decides that she will help Cooper and his mother. She will make his dream come true.

Review:

You will find almost no buzz about this book at all in the mainstream blogging scene. Bancroft is a small independent press, and unfortunately for them and for the author, much of the current book-selling world relies upon appearances--great bookcovers, snazzy websites, spot-on social marketing... Readers have to be able to find you, and then you have to make them want to stay and pay attention to what you want them to learn. The weird graphics you'll find on the publisher's official site (a design throwback to 1998) definitely does not put the best foot forward for this book. The book's cover doesn't make for a great second step, either.

However, those are the only bad things I can say about this book. Really. That's it. Because once I started reading, The Understory's excellently composed prose kept me enthralled until dawn (when I finally fell asleep, exhausted). Readers like me who have trouble nodding off, who worry and fret about our failures into the wee hours of the night, and who constantly land themselves in odd predicaments will feel right at home with Story Easton. Plucky, likable, and somewhat goofy, it is she who binds the rest of the characters together: young Cooper, whose widowed mother is still trapped in the grief of losing her husband; Martin, the author of Cooper's favorite book, debilitated by loss and depression; and Hans, an incorrigible fixer of broken things (and part-time magician, which I guess is kind of the same thing).

The plot enveloped me so completely that I did not put the book down, go to the restroom, or even raid the fridge at 2 am (as I often do); indeed, I may have stopped breathing at some point. The Understory transcends its unimpressive bindings with humor, cleverness, and the uncanny ability to arouse such a tide of emotion, that the reader will overflow with tears and surface with a reawakened sense of hope in humanity. At least, that's the effect it had on me (and sadly, only until the next thing comes along and kills my faith in it again).

Leiknes's deft hand weaves factual information about the rainforest and nature into a stunning tapestry of a story, so intriguing and beautiful as to allow the reader to shrug off his worldly cares and really lose himself in the book. The relationships and entanglements among the characters do not so much form a predictable pattern: instead they reveal a web of interconnectedness among humans and within nature. To break out into a chorus of "The Circle of Life" while reading this book would be to belittle the care and planning the author took in imparting these lessons: be kind, be brave, love and be loved. Leiknes's style is so conversational--not at all preachy or heavy-handed--that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel, and highly recommend it to anyone who needs an uplifting, restorative, and thoughtful read.

I looked past an ugly cover and found a rewarding book inside these pages. I hope you will, too.

*note, while I most of the story is appropriate for all ages, there are a couple of passages that require a more mature reader (though to be honest, as a Harlequin reader from age 10, I would have been ok with those scenes--but that's just me). Parents might want to skip over those bits when reading this to a younger audience.

*I received this book free of charge from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This, in no way, affected my opinion or review of this book.

 

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Follow the author online on Twitter @eleiknes