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 ...

NUBClub decided to read Moonglow for two reasons: love of Chabon's other work in fable making, notably Cavalier and Clay and Yiddish Policeman's Union, and the premise of a biography filled with lies. We felt this novel delivered on both points. Chabon's meandering and fantastical story of his grandmother and grandfather is touching and entertaining without becoming too diffuse or contrived. Chabon writes beautifully here, and particularly beautifully in the depiction of his grandmother (a witch like mystery with a genius for storytelling) and his grandfather (practically an action hero, albeit in at a smaller scale of reptile hunting in his later life) and in their connection. There are books that are just a joy to read paragraph by paragraph, and this is one of them. At the same time, Chabon's brilliance in this novel is that despite the extremely meta conceit that it's a biography of memory that's filled with untruths, we as readers never got into the weeds on what was real and what was not. It's clearly a fairy tale from the first sentences, and the consistent tone -- held together by poetic description and lack of linear plot progression -- allowed us to stop worrying about the ambiguous structure and enjoy the ride. It's a touching tribute to Chabon's grandparents, and just whimsical enough to be a fun ride without losing the edge and truth to principle (not so much facts) that make the book feel like it has stakes. The grandmother in particular as someone who bewitches with secret stories was just a priceless character. Overall, Chabon delivered on expectation with this book, insofar as he made a biography that defied the expectations of both a traditional biography and of a subversion of the truthfulness of the biographic form.