Thursday, March 2, 2017

Moonglow

Moonglow by Michael Chabon 430 pages.
This is the a fictionalized account of the life and wartime experiences of Chabon's grandparents, mostly his grandfather. Or, perhaps it's a novel with a narrator named Mike Chabon telling the story of his grandfather's life. I think, after poking around reviews that it's definitely the latter. Probably. Anyway, it is an interesting tale. There's lots of adventure as a man, born poor and Jewish in Philadelphia, uses the fact that he is smart, creative, gifted even, as he grows up and tries to make his way in the world despite a world war, the love he feels for his with anger issues. The anger serves the unnamed grandfather well during the war, less well when he's fired at one point, post-war. In that scene, grandfather uses his OSS training, and a Bakelite telephone to try and kill his boss.
The shifting chronology and the narrator's discovery of the lives of his grandfather, his grandmother (a holocaust survivor), and his mother make for a great book.

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