Whatever initial resistance we may have to the notion of dying Grandpa, high on Dilaudid, looking back on his long and colorful career is rapidly overcome by Chabon’s obvious pleasure in storytelling, by his gift for writing dialogue with the snap of a screwball comedy, and by his skill at making disparate elements of plot and character come together to reveal a design that owes something to both the Victorian and the magical-realist novel. In fact it’s engrossing to witness the feisty grandfather’s final days with his entranced Boswell of a grandson, and to watch Chabon avoid the pitfalls of tedium and-the greater risk here-sentimentality. This scenario, the premise of Chabon’s new novel, may make Moonglow sound more syrupy, more gimmicky-and less entertaining-than it is. On his deathbed, a cantankerous old Jewish guy, his habitual reticence disarmed by a painkiller, tells his life story to his grandson, a writer named Michael Chabon. Michael Chabon, Oakland, California, January 2016 photograph by Benjamin Tice Smith
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