Moonglow
Michael Chabon
Harper
My grandmother is a voracious reader. Accompanied by a few glasses of white wine at night, or a few mugs of coffee in the morning before anyone else rises, she reads her book. She has plastic bins and shopping bags full of worn paperbacks from a girl at the office, or her brother’s wife, or a book sale. She’ll read everything eventually. Once, I saw her get halfway through a book before she realized she had already read it. Usually, my grandmother will finish each book within a day or two. But sometimes she’ll enjoy a book so much that she won’t read it. She’ll save it, for months, reading small bits at a time, so that it doesn’t end too quickly.
In Moonglow, Michael Chabon gives us the gift of his grandparents: two uniquely flawed people who love each other deeply and who can’t seem to get out of their own way. These are people who were bold characters in their real lives, and they are gripping on paper. Chabon says that he “was aware that in some remote age, my grandmother had been a source of fire, madness, and poetry, but those days were misty legend; one could only infer them from traces in the geological record.” Fire, madness, poetry, fur coats that held in too much heat, a lighter engraved with a stranger’s name, a thermos of tea, German tarot cards, two lovers intertwined in a secret compartment of an otherwise accurate model spaceship: Chabon brings misty legend to life, filling in the cracks, carefully placing each memory in your hand for you to turn over, and investigate for yourself.
Moonglow is the type of story my grandmother would make last for months. Michael Chabon breathes decades of life into his characters in just 430 pages. Give yourself some time to unpack this masterpiece, with a glass of wine if it’s dark, or a mug of coffee if the sun is rising.
Words – Olivia Fader
