Telegraph Avenue in Around the World in 80 Books

Aug 27, 2012 Sam rated it liked it

Shelves: read-2012, reviewed, 1-contemp-literary, young-person-protag

Telegraph Avenue’s release date couldn’t come fast enough for me, so as you can imagine, my expectations were sky high. I’m still in love with the way that Chabon uses language--it was wonderful to be back in the embrace of his beautiful sentences. I tried to keep track of my favorite quotes, but gave up because there were way too many. And yet despite this gushing, I can’t say that I really enjoyed the story. For my Goodreads ratings, three stars is a respectable rating for most books. However, Telegraph Avenue’s release date couldn’t come fast enough for me, so as you can imagine, my expectations were sky high. I’m still in love with the way that Chabon uses language--it was wonderful to be back in the embrace of his beautiful sentences. I tried to keep track of my favorite quotes, but gave up because there were way too many. And yet despite this gushing, I can’t say that I really enjoyed the story. For my Goodreads ratings, three stars is a respectable rating for most books. However, for Chabon's works, I have to say that three stars is an underachievement.

The book was quite sprawling; Chabon directed his attention to no less than 9 or 10 characters that each had at least a few pages devoted to them. A number of them don’t even show up anywhere else, and yet Chabon insists on giving us a glimpse of their inner lives. I’m talking about characters like the nostalgia card selling guy at the convention, the parrot, and Flowers’ nephew. Yes, introducing a lot of these characters can give readers a sense of the community that’s the focus of the story. After all, Chabon wants to examine race relations, gentrification, nostalgia and change, marriage, parent-child relationships, and friendships--the big themes. But the thing is, it all felt too meandering--anything meaningful that Chabon had to say lost any sense of urgency. What greatness I did find in the book was diluted by having to wade through so much “meh.”

I was left cold by so many of the characters who were crammed into the book. Not only were there too many of them, which disturbed the flow of reading, but most of them weren’t very compelling. I couldn’t connect to or understand what Archy was going through, and was frankly bored. (Is it my younger age?) That’s a big problem when Archy is one of the main characters. But at least I didn’t feel like crying from boredom when I was reading Archy’s sections as I did when I had to get through the parts about Gwen and Aviva’s midwife drama; good god that was a huge chore.

To focus on some positives, I’ll mention that at least two of the characters held my attention. Although we only spent a few pages with Cochise Jones, I found that he was the most moving character. That scene when he’s sitting in Archy’s garage, reflecting on parts of his life while being frustrated with how Archy was taking for granted the appearance of his son, was perhaps my favorite. Archy’s father, Luther, was pretty engaging as well and had the potential to be even more so. Luther’s life seemed like it could be mined further—heck, I’d read a book just about Luther.

I don’t regret the time I spent reading Telegraph Avenue, but can’t say it was the most enjoyable experience. I wish the story was tighter, more focused.

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May 08, 2020 Ryan rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-authors, fiction, z2012-published, 2020

Sometimes there’s a really valid reason why you don’t finish a book the first time...

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May 07, 2013 Lara rated it really liked it

All character and not much plot but a lot of fun regardless. It reads like a movie and you can almost see it all as it plays out. If you like Chabon, you should like this.

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