Telegraph Avenue, perhaps Chabon's strongest and most complete effort to date, is a sonorous, sweeping portrait of a contemporary American neighborhood (inspired, somewhat, by his own childhood spent partially in Columbia, Maryland - a planned community that sought to eliminate the racial and economical divisions that stunt so many modern metropolises). When community members rally against the proposed megastore, friendships are tested, motivations are questioned, and allegiances are revealed. Luther, Archy's father, is a former kung fu and blaxploitation movie star whose delinquent past and scheming present ensnares the lives of everyone close to him. Julius, Nat, and Aviva's 14-year-old boy, an ardent film enthusiast, falls in love with Titus, Archy's long-unacknowledged teenaged son. Their spouses, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are popular midwives, but both their friendship and their livelihoods become jeopardized following a delivery that quite nearly turns tragic.Īs with much of Chabon's fiction, a rich cast of supporting characters and interwoven subplots lend the novel a vibrant breadth. Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are best friends and coproprietors of Brokeland Records, a used vinyl record shop whose continued existence is threatened by plans for a nearby megastore helmed by a wealthy, former NFL quarterback. Set during the summer of 2004 in both Oakland and Berkeley (where Chabon himself has resided for the last 15 years), the novel focuses on the intertwined lives and ensuing hardships of two East Bay families. Its genesis an unproduced television pilot he wrote over a decade ago, Telegraph Avenue is an engrossing, well-crafted drama of family and friendship.

All of these strengths are on full display in Telegraph Avenue, Chabon's resonant new novel and his most mature, accessible fiction to date.

Of the distinctive qualities to be found within whatever form his versatile storytelling may take is a prose marked by eloquence and vivaciousness, an uncanny ability to immerse his readers within the lives of his characters, and a narrative structure propelled mainly by his imaginative plots. Since winning the Pulitzer Prize for his spectacular 2000 novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon has gone on to write a diverse array of books restrained by neither style nor genre.

Michael chabon telegraph avenue review