Director of Regional History Mary Tyson recommends Moonglow by Michael Chabon.
To make sense of one’s grandparents’ lives is not a straightforward undertaking. The attempt to understand what life was like two generations earlier is what the novel Moonglow is about.
The author, Michael Chabon, wrote himself as a narrator character: the grandson, Mike. As the narrator, Mike, an aspiring writer, weaves vivid tales told to him by his dying grandfather and he brings them to life through his youthful outlook.
The grandfather, heretofore a man of few words, talks with an uncharacteristically loose tongue caused from hydromorphone pain meds. The stories tumble out about growing up poor in South Philadelphia, about enlisting in the Army Corps of Engineers, fighting in Germany during WWII, his obsession with rocket science.
He tells of the horror of witnessing the liberation of Nordhausen concentration camp, where the workers were horrifically brutalized working on the German rocket, V2. And, in another poignant (yet related) set of stories, he spins a yarn about serving time in jail, his engineer exploits, abandonment of his daughter.
He reveals his capacity for deep love, and especially for his wife, who suffered with mental illness.
The chronology of the stories jumps seemingly haphazardly. This can feel like a jolt and a bit hard to follow. Once you let the tales of adventure and their subtexts of love and regret wash over you, it’s easier to accept the mish-mash structure.
Perhaps the point of this loose way of stringing the stories together is to relish the moments that make up our lives.
I highly recommend Moonglow if you like genre-defying novels that are a mix of historical fiction, magical realism, a bit of memoir—all written in a cadence of comic book adventure.
You can find it in the Library: in print FICTION Chabon, in eaudiobook format on Libby, or as an ebook on the Library’s Nook.
