Berkeley novelist Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay, has a new book out today. Telegraph Avenue, which he discussed on KQED Public Radio's Forum show (archive here later), is set "in a neighborhood that straddles Berkeley and Oakland," as Glen Weldon's NPR review notes. First paragraph of the review:
Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue is an agreeable if ultimately frustrating shaggy-dog tale of a novel that slips its leash and lopes its discursive and distinctly unhurried way through the unkempt backyards of its characters' lives. There is much here to recommend, but then, there is much here, period, including but not limited to: blackmail, infidelity, first love, kung fu, midwifery, a Barack Obama cameo and an enormously phallic black zeppelin, all presented in a manner as loose and tension-free as a stoner's wee-hours disquisition on why his favorite album totally rules, man...
You can read whole chunks of the novel on Google Books. Hit the forward arrow button on the tool bar to keep reading.
More reviews:
- Washington Post
- Onion AV Club
- LA Times
- New York Times Book Review (by fellow Pulitzer fiction winner Jennifer Egan)
Here's Chabon discussing the 10-year process of conceiving and writing the book...