In short, the novel is pure entertainment, even if it has things to say about popular culture, sexuality and fatherhood, too. The novel, while long, is varied in scene, with chapters often reading like a self-contained instalment of a long work, much like the serialised stories of comic books. Chabon’s novel does not read like a Boys’ Own Adventure, despite the promise of the title, although there are various scenes in the book which are gripping and adventurous, including Josef’s (Joe’s) escape from Prague to America sharing a sarcophagus with a Jewish Golem, to his period in Antarctica as a radioman listening to Nazi U-Boat signals, where he even mounts a daring if somewhat pointless attack on a lone German geologist in another Antarctic station. The story centres upon comic book creators Josef Kavalier and Sammy Clay, beginning in the late 1930s and ending with the hearings of the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, otherwise known as the Comic Book Hearings of 1954. Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a fictional account of comic books during the ‘Golden Age’ of comics.
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