Overview

From Michael Chabon, the bestselling author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay; his first novel in 5 years is a lovingly painted pop-culture epic. One street in Oakland, California. As the summer of 2004 draws to a close, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are hanging in there, co-regents of Brokeland Records. Their wives, Gwen and Aviva, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, a pair of semi-legendary midwives. When former star quarterback Gibson Goode announces plans to dump his latest Dogpile megastore on Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy fear the worst for their vulnerable little enterprise. As behind Goode’s proposal lurks a nefarious scheme. While their husbands struggle to mount a defence, Aviva and Gwen find themselves caught up in a professional battle that tests the limits of their friendship. And into their already tangled lives comes Titus Joyner, the teenage son Archy has never acknowledged. An intimate epic set to the laid-back beat of classic vinyl soul-jazz and pulsing with a virtuosic, pyrotechnical style all of its own, ‘Telegraph Avenue’ is Michael Chabon’s most dazzling book yet.

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9780007318490

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Reviews

Tom writes: Reading Telegraph Avenue was a confounding and at times overwhelming experience. Once I decided to stop looking at the events taking place too literally and instead allowed myself to enjoy Chabon's weird and wonderful prose I had an incredibly good time reading it. As a massive nerd much like Chabon, I understood every reference to the Vulcan mating ritual of Pon Far or to the Guardians of the Galaxy. But like all of his works, if you're at a loss as to what he's referencing his writing is strong and true enough that the emotion behind is still conveyed. The story loosely follows Nat Jaffe and Archy Stallings the owners of a Jazz record store that is coming under threat from the impending opening of a massive new shopping complex that will have its own record selection that cannot be competed with. This overall story arc is a small part in a novel that is ultimately about these two men maturing and accepting themselves and their families as the world they know crumbles around them.

An end-of-an era epic....A Joyce-an remix with a hipper rhythm track. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Author Information

Michael Chabon is the author of two collections of short stories, ‘A Model World’ and ‘Werewolves in their Youth’, the novels ‘The Mysteries of Pittsburgh’, ‘Wonder Boys’, ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay’, ‘The Yiddish Policemen’s Union’ and ‘Telegraph Avenue’, and the non-fiction books ‘Maps and Legends and Manhood for Amateurs’. ‘Wonder Boys’ has been made into a film starring Michael Douglas and Robert Downey Jr. and ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay’ won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, GQ, Esquire and Playboy. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and their four children.

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