SOURCE: “Sam and Joe Take on the Nazis,” in Times Literary Supplement, October 6, 2000, p. 24.

In the following review, Horspool offers a positive assessment of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

Until now, it has been difficult to notice a pattern to Michael Chabon's work, mainly because he has published comparatively little. His first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, was published in 1987, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is only his third, after Wonder Boys (1995) and two collections of short stories (A Model World and Other Stories, 1991, and Werewolves in Their Youth, published last year). But some landmarks are beginning to be discernible. First, the critics’ early, convenient comparisons with his contemporaries Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis have been shown, with each book, to be ever wider of the mark. Chabon seems much more interested in innocence than experience—his characters tend to be ingénus trying to...