Book description
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
a nefarious story lurks.
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 laidback 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, and a
must-read for fans of Nick Hornby's 'High Fidelity'. 'Telegraph Avenue
is a wonderful novel … Wonderfully engaging, exuberantly written … the
world constructed here is one to lose yourself in … This is a novel that
I found myself slowing down while reading, out of sheer pleasure. I put
it off, and rationed it out, and just didn't want it to end.' Philip
Hensher, Spectator
'Deeply wise and soulful … What you get is a big, serious, probing
American novel, a page-turner that, like Chabon himself, seems to walk
the line between high and low culture' Attica Locke, Guardian
'Telegraph Avenue achieves the blissed-out honey-coloured atmosphere of
Cameron Crowe's film 'Almost Famous' or Richard Linklater's 'Dazed and
Confused', but is deeper and more intelligent than either of those … It
feels entirely relevant to the uncertainty of the present moment' Sunday Times
'An amazingly rich, emotionally detailed story … Mr. Chabon can write
about just about anything … with a real, lived-in sense of empathy and
passion.' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
'Like a favourite old jazz LP, its richly pleasurable form beginning to
end.' Independent
'A multi-generational, anatomy-of-a-community doorstopper with a plot
like clockwork and sentences like toffee' Sunday Telegraph Michael
Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of seven
novels - including The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The
Yiddish Policemen's Union - two collections of short stories, and one
other work of non-fiction. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his
wife and children.
