Reviews
One of Chabon's great gifts is an ability to beguile us with prose that exudes warmth into seeing ourselves in others, to even know them as ourselves. It's a feat that parlays Telegraph Avenue , with its diverse population, into an All-American novel, one of the great ones., Chabon not only knows how [his characters] feel, but how they talk. His dialogue is a thing to behold, the plot unrelenting. And I can't imagine any writer, male or female, ever delivering a more breathtaking description of a woman giving birth. Some midwife, this Chabon., A beautiful, prismatic maximalism of description and tone, a sly meditation on appropriation as the real engine of integration, and an excellent rationale for twelve-page sentences., Expect its publication to be one of the bigger literary events of the year, akin to the release of The Marriage Plot this year or Freedom in 2010., A dazzling star turn of a novel that showcases Chabon's writing talents like a digital TV screen above Times Square….Chabon does love popular culture, but he loves humanity more, and that love is the power behind this sweeping novel., A buoyant novel, written with the author's typical stylistic elegance and empathetic imagination….His prose is as energizing as ever, in part because he's always willing to try high-risk maneuvers up on the figurative balance beam., The writing - stylized, humorous and often dazzling - is inflected with tones of jazz and funk. But it's Chabon's ear for the sounds of the human soul that make this book a masterpiece, as his vividly drawn characters learn to live at the intersection of disappointment and hope., An amazingly rich, emotionally detailed story….[Chabon's] people become so real to us, their problems so palpably netted in the author's buoyant, expressionistic prose, that the novel gradually becomes a genuinely immersive experience - something increasingly rare in our ADD age., A magnificently crafted, exuberantly alive, emotionally lustrous, and socially intricate saga....Bubbling with lovingly curated knowledge about everything from jazz to pregnancy…Chabon's rhapsodically detailed, buoyantly plotted, warmly intimate cross-cultural tale of metamorphoses is electric with suspense, humor, and bebop dialogue….An embracing, radiant masterpiece..., Displays both his sense of ordinary people's inner lives and his rich, freewheeling prose….A dense, flavorful book about race, class, politics, culture and sexuality, as expansive and ambitious as anything Chabon has published to date….An essential, unforgettable read., Fresh, unpretentious, delectably written….For all his explorations into the contentious dynamics of family, race and community, Mr. Chabon's first desire is simply to enchant with words. Eight novels in, he still uses language like someone amazed by a newly discovered superpower., A jam that grooves, entertains, entrances and sticks in your head with infectious melodies….[Chabon] is a hypnotizing master of language, crafting fresh descriptors for familiar functions, poetic detours that never sacrifice narrative flow, well-oiled metaphorical machinations, and seamless time travelling that makes the phrase 'flashback' seem obsolete., Chabon is an extraordinarily generous writer. He is generous to his characters, to his landscapes, to syntax, to words, to his readers—there is a real joy in his work….Both ambitious and lighthearted, the novel is a touching, gentle, comic meditation., Michael Chabon is the Michael Jordan of American novelists…. Telegraph Avenue could serve as a master class on how to write a novel., 'A buoyant novel, written with the author's typical stylistic elegance and empathetic imagination'.His prose is as energizing as ever, in part because he's always willing to try high-risk maneuvers up on the figurative balance beam.' ( Troy Patterson, Slate ), As ever, Chabon is a performing magician. He can take any topic and stage it so the crowd smiles and even oohs its amazement….Chabon makes a grab for the entire world in a single bighearted book., A stylized, rapturous novel…. Telegraph Avenue entertains with a riotous mashup of comics, kung fu, '70s jazz and family strife, but at the core lie some startlingly sober revelations., As always, Chabon's gorgeous prose astonishes, particularly in the Joycean chapter 'A Bird of Wide Experience'….Like that colorful bird, Telegraph Avenue dazzles and soars., A genuinely moving story about race and class, parenting and marriage…Chabon is inarguably one of the greatest prose stylists of all time, powering out sentences that are the equivalent of executing a triple back flip on a bucking bull while juggling chain saws and making love to three women., [ Telegraph Avenue ] has a Great American Novel heft to it--probably because, all caps aside, it is a great American novel., Chabon is an extraordinarily generous writer. He is generous to his characters, to his landscapes, to syntax, to words, to his readers - there is a real joy in his work….Both ambitious and lighthearted, the novel is a touching, gentle, comic meditation., 'The writing - stylized, humorous and often dazzling - is inflected with tones of jazz and funk. But it's Chabon's ear for the sounds of the human soul that make this book a masterpiece, as his vividly drawn characters learn to live at the intersection of disappointment and hope.' ( Robin Micheli, People (4 out of 4 stars)), An achingly poignant vibe of sweet and soulful idealism makes itself heard throughout Telegraph Avenue ….It's a dream worth imagining, and Chabon does so with skill, charm, and no small amount of virtuosic writing., Forget Joycean or Bellovian or any other authorial allusion. Telegraph Avenue might best be described as Chabonesque. Exuberantly written, generously peopled, its sentences go off like a summer fireworks show, in strings of bursting metaphor., Astounding....steamrolls the barrier that has kept the Great American Novel at odds with the country it's supposed to reflect....[A] huge-hearted, funny, improbably hip book., '?Virtuosity? is the word most commonly associated with Chabon, and if Telegraph Avenue , the latest from Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Yiddish Policeman's Union , is at first glance less conceptual than its predecessors, the sentences are no less remarkable.' ( Publishers Weekly ), 'A jam that grooves, entertains, entrances and sticks in your head with infectious melodies'.[Chabon] is a hypnotizing master of language, crafting fresh descriptors for familiar functions, poetic detours that never sacrifice narrative flow, well-oiled metaphorical machinations, and seamless time travelling that makes the phrase ?flashback? seem obsolete.' ( Jake Austen, Chicago Tribune ), Witty and compassionate and full of more linguistic derring-do than any other writer in American could carry off., An amazingly rich, emotionally detailed story….[Chabon's] people become so real to us, their problems so palpably netted in the author's buoyant, expressionistic prose, that the novel gradually becomes a genuinely immersive experience—something increasingly rare in our ADD age., A magnificently crafted, exuberantly alive, emotionally lustrous, and socially intricate saga....Bubbling with lovingly curated knowledge about everything from jazz to pregnancy…Chabon's rhapsodically detailed, buoyantly plotted, warmly intimate cross-cultural tale of metamorphoses is electric with suspense, humor, and bebop dialogue….An embracing, radiant masterpiece., Chabon's hugely likable characters all face crises of existential magnitude, rendered in an Electra Glide flow of Zen sentences and zinging metaphors that make us wish the needle would never arrive at the final groove., 'A magnificently crafted, exuberantly alive, emotionally lustrous, and socially intricate saga....Bubbling with lovingly curated knowledge about everything from jazz to pregnancy?Chabon's rhapsodically detailed, buoyantly plotted, warmly intimate cross-cultural tale of metamorphoses is electric with suspense, humor, and bebop dialogue'.An embracing, radiant masterpiece...' ( Booklist , starred review ), This is a novel rich in story and character, rich in its dialogue and descriptions, rich in spirit and invention - and full of sharp, funny writing….The spirit of Telegraph Avenue is one of union and reconciliation, a welcome, exuberant voice in our fractious times., Chabon has a near effortless ability to reveal the huge universal human truths that scaffold absurdly specific circumstances, and he does so on nearly every page here., A moving, sprawling, modern-day tale that uses the improvisational shifts and rhythms of jazz and soul to tell the story of two couples….With seeming ease, Chabon shifts from high-wire flourishes…to moments of crystalline simplicity., [ Telegraph Avenue ] has a Great American Novel heft to it - probably because, all caps aside, it is a great American novel., He writes with such warmth and humor and sheer enthusiasm - for his characters, for the rhythms and atmosphere of Oakland, for geek culture, for the mysterious power of music, which he captures with uncommon descriptive virtuosity - that by the end it's hard to resist this charmingly earnest book., A genuinely moving story about race and class, parenting and marriage…Chabon is inarguably one of the greatest prose stylists of all time, powering out sentences that are the equivalent of executing a triple back flip on a bucking bull while juggling chain saws and making love to three women….., Chabon has made a career of routing big, ambitious projects through popular genres, with superlative results….The scale of Telegraph Avenue is no less ambitious….Much of the wit...inheres in Chabon's astonishing prose. I don't just mean the showy bits…I mean the offhand brilliance that happens everywhere., His most mature, accessible fiction to date…An engrossing, well-crafted drama of family and friendship….Chabon's storytelling gifts seem to know no bounds, and the dexterity with which he crafts his beautiful prose is often breathtaking., Telegraph Avenue is so exuberant, it's as if Michael Chabon has pulled joy from the air and squeezed it into the shape of words....His sentences spring, bounce, set off sparklers, even when dwelling in mundane details….Fantastic., A beautiful, prismatic maximalism of description and tone, a sly meditation on appropriation as the real engine of integration, and an excellent rationale for twelve-page sentences…, [Chabon] is a truly gifted writer of prose: He writes long, luxurious sentences that swoop and meander before circling back in on themselves, not infrequently approximating the improvisational jazz that Archy and Nat hold so dear., A sparkling, mesmerizing read….That's what Chabon's books do, sentence after sentence, page after page: they force you to bring your game up to his level….His writer's eye makes the world a more vivid, vital place to live., Chabon's inventiveness requires language dazzling and deft enough to put it across, and like most of his later work, Telegraph Avenue reads easy - I downed 300 pages flying back from Denmark, stopping only to eat and nap., 'Michael Chabon is the Michael Jordan of American novelists'. Telegraph Avenue could serve as a master class on how to write a novel.' ( John Broening, Denver Post ), 'Virtuosity' is the word most commonly associated with Chabon, and if Telegraph Avenue , the latest from Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Yiddish Policeman's Union , is at first glance less conceptual than its predecessors, the sentences are no less remarkable., If any novelist can pack the entire American zeitgeist into 500 pages, it's Chabon....Ambitious, densely written, sometimes very funny, and fabulously over the top, here's a rare book that really could be the great American novel.
