andreaonorato

Noir meets speculative fiction meets Jewish fiction meets Northern Exposure. Chabon creates a fascinating world and plays within the bounds of the genre, but while the complaints I've heard were that he stuck too close to the cliches of plot, I had fewer issues with that and more with some of the thinly-drawn characters. One of his strengths is to flesh out very real people who jump off the page at you, and sadly only a handful of characters do. Of course the main character in this book is Jewish Sitka itself, and this is the kind of story that makes you want about nineteen more books in the same setting, never mind the characters in this one. My other complaint is one that's sadly starting to feel familiar with Chabon, which is that the story seems to run out of gas about 80% of the way through, and the rest is a slow, sad, teetering shuffle to the finish. It worked in Kavalier and Clay, but after the last few books I've read I've started to crave more in the way of an ending. I've always felt he was closest in spirit to John Irving, who writes his books from the conclusion backwards, and I think Chabon could learn a thing or two from him. Still, highly recommended for the breathtaking scope and detail of the concept, even if it's the kind of thing that makes you want to bang your head against the wall when it gets classified as "alternate history" when it's by a "literary" author, rather than being the sff AU it is.

2022-11-14 13:29