Moonglow
by Michael Chabon
Nominations: Carnegie Finalist 2017, Dublin Longlist 2018, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2016
Date Read: September 25, 2023
Moonglow is the fictional account of Chabon’s grandfather in all his real and imagined glory. Having lived an unconventional and eventful life, Chabon attempts to discover his grandfather’s secrets and motivations for his decisions.
Grandfather married a French woman he met during WWII. He helped to raise this woman’s daughter, who wasn’t his biological child. He stayed by his wife’s side when she literally lost her mind and was in and out of a mental hospital. He served time in prison for attempted murder when he attacked his boss after he was informed he was being let go. He began an entirely new career in his retirement making models of spacecraft for NASA. And in his widowhood he fell in love with a neighbor, giving her his whole heart.
These accounts are presented as a deathbed confession of a man who is on heavy painkillers, dying of cancer. All the mysteries and secrets of his life come spilling out in a narrative that’s almost difficult to believe. The details and truth of his life have been hidden and with his death, just about everything comes to light, including the essence of this man.
As a work of fictional nonfiction, this was a moving and thoughtfully told story. As a novel, I found it ploddingly slow to the point that previous plot twists became subsumed by subsequent happenings. When earlier shenanigans were referred to, they stirred a vague memory from earlier in the book. I wanted to love this novel, having enjoyed Chabon’s earlier work. Unfortunately, this was a miss for me.
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