Soon after I started reading the
re-issue of Michael Chabon's 2002 fantasy novel Summerland
(Harper Perennial reissue, 2016,
528 pages, $11.10/10.99) I was captured by this story of Ethan Feld,
characterized as “the worst ball player in the history of Clam
Island,” a nine or ten year old boy who has lost his mother and
lives with his inventor father on an island off the coast of
Washington. As the novel opens, Ethan's father is taking him to pick
up his friend Jennifer T. Rideout, a super player, to go to
Summerland, a baseball field on Clam Island where it never rains, and
local residents have played baseball for generations. As I approach
three-fourths of a century, I have come to the point in life where a
suggested age range of 10 – 13 years with a grade range of fifth to
eighth is no longer threatening to me. Chabon opens this lengthy,
involving, intriguing trip into the world of baseball, magic, strange
creatures, and the ultimate battle between good and evil with a
rather lengthy forward detailing the geneses of this book in his own
losses coupled with his desire to marry a book about baseball with
the world of fantasy and coming of age. He succeeds on all fronts.
It
turns out that the Summerland baseball field lies at a crucial
crossing point of various strands of the universe, a place where
worlds that seem to be different interconnect. Various peoples and
creatures viewed by those of us who are limited to our own world come
together and interact in semi-conscious and mystical ways. So
creatures familiar to all of us in our mythological and imaginary
lives, come alive in Summerland.
Werewolves, fairies, giants, abominable snowmen (or women), Paul
Bunyan, Pecos Pete, and many more we know as well as others that, as
far as I can tell, Chabon invents criss-cross through the pages of
the book as Ethan and his friend Jennifer T. fight a battle for what
turns out to be the future of all the worlds of the universe. The
forces of evil, commanded by the shapeshifter Coyote, wage a
desperate, dirty, unsportsmanlike (remember the baseball metaphor)
battle to subdue light, goodness, and fair play. Throughout, a
reader, depending upon such factors as age, openness to to fantasy
worlds, curiousity, and such, will be delighted, intrigued, and
beguiled. The book creates a new universe, as all good fantasy does,
which captures just enough verisimilitude to keep the world
familiar...and strange. The tension and suspense are effective enough
to keep one reading, never quite certain that a good ending is,
indeed, possible.
Michael Chabon
I
haven't read anything by Michael Chabon since the wonderful Amazing
Adventures of Kavilier & Clay,
written an 2000, which won a Pulitzer prize in 2001. Chabon's career
has involved him in writing novels as well as film-scripts. He's also
a fairly regular contributor to the New Yorker. Along with
novels, he has published screenplays, children's books, comics, and
newspaper serials. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife,
the novelist Ayelet Waldman, and their children
Summerland
by Michael Chabon (Harper Perennial reissue, 2016, 528 pages,
$11.10/10.99) is described as children's fantasy fiction, but unless
fantasy readers are always children, its appeal is much wider than
that, reaching out with humor, nuance, and enormous creative
imagination to readers of any age who are not bound by the strictures
of reality. I received the book from the publisher as an electronic
galley through Edelweiss:
Above the Treeline and read it on my Kindle
App.
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