Moonglow - Michael Chabon

Such a beautiful book.  I have read Michael Chabon before - Kavalier & Clay, I think - but it didn't prepare me for Moonglow.  I now understand that Chabon is a Jewish John Irving.  His richly textured narratives twist and turn over decades, seasoned with what seems to be autobiographical content but which probably isn't.

In this case it is the story of Mike's grandfather.  I'm not sure we ever get his name; he is the maternal step-grandfather, so it's not Chabon, and he is referred to throughout as simply 'my grandfather'.  He is an engineer in World War II, ultimately tasked with tracking down Werner von Braun before the Russians get him.  Along the way he discovers an abandoned V2 rocket, a discovery which changes his life, and von Braun's cache of documents.

Postwar, he marries a beautiful French emigree who already has a daughter, Mike's mother.  The wife has suffered horribly in the war (she is Jewish but was saved by nuns).  She is slightly zany - an actress - and is a late night hostess on Baltimore TV.  But she suffers from visions of a skinless horse and spends time in a mental asylum.  This coincides with her husband's brief burst of midlife madness.  He assaults his boss and is sent to jail.  This turns out to be another seminal event.  Whilst inside he works on homemade rocketry and once released earns a small fortune in partnership with Mike's uncle making models for the Space Race.

Then his wife dies - killed by HRT which restored her sanity.  The grandfather sells up and moves to a Jewish retirement community in Florida where he has one last sexual fling and tries to hunt down a snake that has eaten his partner's late husband's cat - a parallel to his hunt for Werner von Braun, which is also resolved.

Ultimately he dies in his stepdaughter's home.  At the end grandson Mike helps nurse him, prizing out the taciturn old man's story bit by bit.

As I said at the top, it is all beautifully done.  Chabon switches past and present and inbetween, all seemlessly.  We meet Mike's mother as a precocious child, uppity teen and successful career woman.  Mike's father, long estranged, appears fleetingly from time to time.  Far more real is the grandfather's younger brother Ray, rabbit, pool hall hustler, entrepreneur, lothario and huckster.  In later appearances he sports an eyepatch; apparently Mike's mother shot him but the grandfather wasn't there so it isn't in the book - in itself, a prime example of Chabon's mastery.

I was wholly involved at every stage.  The book couldn't go on long enough - and yet somehow it did.  The ending was timely, right, perfect in every way.  Contemporary American picaresque at its very best.

Prelude to Space - Arthur C Clarke

Prelude to Space was apparently written in 1947 but not published until 1953, which I find hard to believe. There seems to be a manuscript from 1947 but is it the same text as that published in 1953? Or is it, as with so many authors, just a portmanteau title that was attached to several works until the right one came along?

Certainly it is the right title for this novel. It is entirely about events leading up to the first moon shot in 1978, British of course, from Woomera in Australia, here rechristened Luna City. The book ends with the spaceship taking off and we can only guess the outcome from the epilogue in which our retired hero, Dirk Alexson, is living on the Moon for health reasons, a benefit I have never seen elsewhere. Other prophetic content includes the famous geostationary communication satellites, but it is the spaceship itself which is the most interesting.


Clarke envisages a two stage process for Prometheus. Beta is the mother ship which transports the rocket Alpha and fuel pods into Earth orbit. From the back of Beta, Alpha attaches itself to the fuel source and uses atomic power to head off the Moon. Thus Clarke gives us a recyclable, affordable system which causes vastly less pollutants than a the skyscraper of inflammable carbon fuel that was actually used by NASA. In time some parts of the system will be moved to the lunar surface which will become Man's gateway to the stars, hence this really is the prelude to space, not just the prelude to the Moon.


All of this stuff, framed as debates between the characters or presentations at press conferences, is totally fascinating. As a novel, however, it is a total failure. The characters are simplistic mouthpieces, even though they are supposed to possess giant intellects. There is no action, mystery or tension. Frankly, there are no meaningful human relationships. The only real fantasy is Alexson's afterlife on the Moon. Yet I loved it.