I lived in Berkeley for twenty years. I know the area, and I thought I knew the culture, but from the get-go I had no idea what Chabon was talking about. ( )

I loved this one! It's right up there with The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay as my favorite Chabon novels. I really want to go out and buy a record player and some records now. ( )

I was so looking forward to this book. After the over-the-top suspense of [b:The Yiddish Policemen's Union|16703|The Yiddish Policemen's Union|Michael Chabon|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1349076093s/16703.jpg|95855] and the bittersweet comic book epic [b:The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay|3985|The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay|Michael Chabon|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1355094690s/3985.jpg|2693329], I was hoping for more fine writing set in the California music world. Boy am I disappointed.

First, the cast is too big. There are really six main characters (four too many) and they are all supporting characters for each other, along with the other (even more!) supporting characters. Thankfully, Chabon does a reasonable job of making them distinct individuals. I found it difficult to pick one to identify with for the duration of the story.

Second, the prose suffers from authoritis. It's just too much. I like it when an author spends some time choosing their words and constructing beautiful sentences. It gives life and adds poetry to what can become dull deliberation. But there was so much of this here that it felt like Chabon was just showing off.

Third, the large cast meant that there were too many plots. Each of the main characters had a life changing situation to deal with and most had sub-plots. Chabon may have been going for realism here, but this is a novel and too much realism makes the story lack focus. It feels jumpy and full of vignettes, rather than a continuous stream. Perhaps that what the author wanted, but I didn't like it.

Fourth, there were too many side-trips to nowhere. I don't need the complete backstory of every mother the midwife tends to. I don't need President Obama popping up at a party for no good reason.

On the other hand, there is a richness to this writing that immerses you into record shop and the apartments and the cafes and the warehouses these people inhabit. If you have the time to spend meandering through this world, you may be rewarded. But if you don't have patience for it, you may just be frustrated. ( )

So, let's start off by being fair:
1) I would never had even looked twice at this book had it not been by Michael Chabon.
2) I had idly wondered, in my revery at [b:The Yiddish Policemen's Union|16703|The Yiddish Policemen's Union|Michael Chabon|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1386925449s/16703.jpg|95855] how people who weren't me and didn't share my passions reacted to the book. And now I have an answer.
This book is ostensibly about lay midwives, jazz music and blaxploitation films.
I can't quite figure out how to put how I feel about lay midwives into a sentence that is polite enough for social media and does not horribly side track this review, so let's let that suffice.
I certainly don't hate music, but I'm just not one of those people who *gets* music, you know? Like, I wish I did and I respect people who are into music, but Chabon goes on and on about a piece, or whatever, and my eyes glaze and I skip several paragraphs and he's still going on and I have no idea what he's talking about, and if we're truly being honest here (because hey, why not?) I really don't know why anyone would buy a record in 2014 anyway so the fact that there are COMPETING record stores seems ridiculously anachronistic, but again, I don't *get* music, so what do I know?
And finally, I've never had an opinion on blaxploitation films (although I strongly recommend going down the rabbit hole and wikipedia-ing blaxploitation, and that finding the legions of other subgenres ending in -ploitation.)
So the idea that I would read and enjoy a book about lay midwives, jazz and blaxploitation was already on flimsy ground.
And let me also say, that I certainly don't believe that there are certain topics that are verboten based on race or sex or religion. But then, let's pretend to ourselves for a second that we're Michael Chabon, and we're famous for writing books about bi-curious geeky Jewish boys and we start a book about a bi-curious geeky Jewish boy, who happens to be into Jazz and then we end up also writing about blaxploitation and then before you know it, there are a couple of Black characters and then all of a sudden you're knee-deep in racial tension. So there's a few of things you can do: you could back out until you're back on safe territory; you can do a lot of researching or you can decide to forge ahead, gunsblazing, and write about racial relations.
Chabon clearly decided to do that latter, and while I will continue to sing his praises for writing uncomfortable truths and borderline offensively accurate portrayals of the Jewish community, as a Jewish woman reading a book by a Jewish author, I was pretty unsettled by him (attempting to) do the same with the African American community. And intersectionality was definitely problematic: in an entire book on Jewish-Back relations there were two female Black characters: An afro-touting, impossibly skinny, impossibly sexy, aged sex symbol/film star and a perpetually hungry, perpetually angry, perpetually pregnant woman. Not that the Black men were portrayed that much better: they inevitably abandoned their children and were to a one portrayed as violent, cheating and irresponsible.
Also, his conclusion seemed to be that White people (of whom there are no non-Jews in the book) and Black people are too different and want things that are too different and any partnership, or indeed real friendship is doomed to fail.

In conclusion, if this had just been a book about privileged, Jewish, Julius Jaffe, who writes Lovecraftian poetry, and his questionably unrequited love for Titus Joyner, obsessed with Blaxploitation and trying to come in to his own after a troubled childhood, and it was done respectfully, without stereotypes and the other 95% were jettisoned, I would have read the heck out of it. As was, an extremely poor showing by one of my favorite authors. ( )

The most common accusations against this book are: 1. It's too wordy; 2. It's racist.

Yes, it is wordy. It's a Michael Chabon book, so there's no chance that it will NOT be wordy. However, I like words, and he uses enough active verbs to keep me interested.

"It's racist" - hmmm. I don't know that I agree. Books that paint any ethnicity as flawless are boring and hollow and false, and I have little patience for them. Having characters that are complicated, that are nice people but who not infrequently do stupid or annoying or self-centered things, well it rings true. I think that the negativity comes from the fact that the author is white, and that most of the characters are black, and so readers feel like he is being disrespectful to the black community when he creates flaws in his black characters; if Chabon was black not one person would call this book racist. ( )