I'm only halfway done with the book, but I thought I would blog about my thoughts so far to give the site some love and give my friends something to read while they're bored at work.
So at first I really didn't think I was going to like this book. Which is not surprising, because it is true for like 85% of books that I pick up having never read anything by that author before. But I powered through the initial disinterest and now I am totally into it.
Just like with Rabbit, Run, I am finding the supporting cast to be just as, or even more interesting than the protagonist. The down-on-his-luck noir detective is a pretty worn out plot device (see Roger Rabbit, Tracer Bullet, the 1930s) and I thought at first that the character was going to be two-dimensional. Swig from a flask, make a comment about a "dame" or a "broad," run off a string of one-liners, and solve the case. I thought Landsman was going to be simple, basically. But turns out he has a detailed past rife with complications and tragedy, his motivation to keep going is unclear but seems rooted in a general desire to do good work, and he is dirty and gritty without becoming a parody. He's pretty balanced.
Berko the sidekick is pretty awesome too. Pretty much anyone who carries around a giant hammer to scare the shit out of some gangsters with has got my general approval. I think he and Landsman pair very well. Again, at first I thought that as a duo they would be pretty flat, the typical big/little, clean/dirty, Jewish/Alaskan Native dichotomies, but I think they are funny together.
And the idea of a giant Jewish colony in the middle of Alaska is pretty awesome too. Chabon does a really good job of dropping little bits of information about the alternate reality so that you have a little bit of a hint of these past events, but don't get the full story. Like mentioning that the a-bomb fell on Berlin. It gives you a brief, fleeting glimpse. It's like when you're reading Lord of the Rings and Tolkein suddenly drops a reference to Ancalagon the Black, baddest dragon of all time or whatever, but doesn't go on to fully explain it or give the details of events. It's a great author trick that allows them to create this big world but also allows the reader to use some of his or her own ideas to fill it in. Just well done.
The plot, in typical page-turner fashion, is sucking me in. Without giving anything away, I just want to say that I like the twists and turns and the (sometimes excrutiatingly) slow revelations.
So those are my halfway thoughts.
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this is how i feel about chabon in general. he's good at deconstructing a genre and making it into something else. i just read a short story of his about sherlock holmes in his later life that was really good, too. i'm only about halfway as well and agree with everything you've said. it really sucks me it. it's kind of intimidating to read a book with so much density sometimes, because it's hard to pick up and casually peruse. you gotta let your mind go deep into this stuff.
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