Moonglow

A Novel

By: Michael Chabon

Narrated by: George Newbern

Following on the heels of his New York Times–bestselling novel Telegraph Avenue, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Michael Chabon delivers another literary masterpiece: a novel of truth and lies, family legends, and existential adventure—and the forces that work to destroy us.

In 1989, fresh from the publication of his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon traveled to his mother’s home in Oakland, California, to visit his terminally ill grandfather. Tongue loosened by powerful painkillers, memory stirred by the imminence of death, Chabon’s grandfather shared recollections and told stories the younger man had never heard before, uncovering bits and pieces of a history long buried and forgotten. That dreamlike week of revelations forms the basis of the novel Moonglow, the latest feat of legerdemain in the ongoing magic act that is the art of Michael Chabon.

Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession, made to his grandson, of a man the narrator refers to only as “my grandfather.” It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and desire and ordinary love, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at mid-century and, above all, of the destructive impact—and the creative power—of the keeping of secrets and the telling of lies. A gripping, poignant, tragicomic, scrupulously researched and wholly imaginary transcript of a life that spanned the dark heart of the twentieth century, Moonglow is also a tour de force of speculative history in which Chabon attempts to reconstruct the mysterious origins and fate of Chabon Scientific, Co., an authentic mail-order novelty company whose ads for scale models of human skeletons, combustion engines and space rockets were once a fixture in the back pages of Esquire, Popular Mechanics and Boy’s Life. Along the way Chabon devises and reveals, in bits and pieces whose hallucinatory intensity is matched only by their comic vigor and the radiant moonglow of his prose, a secret history of his own imagination.

From the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to the penal utopia of New York’s Wallkill Prison, from the heyday of the space program to the twilight of “the American Century,” Moonglow collapses an era into a single life and a lifetime into a single week. A lie that tells the truth, a work of fictional non-fiction, an autobiography wrapped in a novel disguised as a memoir, Moonglow is Chabon at his most daring, his most moving, his most Chabonesque.

a gem of a book but recording has a tiny flaw

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Chabon writes so masterfully--he captivated me completely, and it was only after I'd finished listening that I began to understand his ingenious manipulation of the reader. My one quibble is that George Newbern was not coached on the preferred pronunciation of several Hebrew words, such as Kaddish. Every time he pronounced it as KadDISH, I winced.

Another great tale from Chabon!

Not sure which I enjoyed most, that tale itself, it Chabon's storytelling. Very highly recommended!

Disappointing

Would you try another book from Michael Chabon and/or George Newbern?

Yes I would try another Chabon book, but not another read by George Newbern.

What didn’t you like about George Newbern’s performance?

It really seemed like he had no feeling for the story or the characters - his reading was wooden or robotic. Perhaps he simply hadn't read the book in advance of the reading - which few readers can get away with. This was too bad because he has a nice voice and clear articulation; it just didn't flow and I found it hard to get into the story while listening to it.

Was Moonglow worth the listening time?

I stopped listening and checked the book out of the library.

Meh

Has some great parts but it does hold together all that well. overall, I'm glad to have read it yet I was also glad to be finished.

Slow to start

I almost gave up on this book. The set up was very slow. I did enjoy the reader's voice for the characters and the sprinkling of poetic description strategically placed throughout the novel.