The brilliance of Moonglow stands as a strident defence of the form itself, a bravura demonstration of the endless mutability and versatility of the novel' - The Observer 'Entirely sure footed, propulsive, the work of a master at his very best. 'A wondrous book.thoroughly enchanting' - Washington Post

Why did he try to strangle a former business partner with a telephone cord? What was he thinking when he and a buddy set explosives on a bridge in Washington, D.C.? What did he feel while he hunted down Wernher von Braun in Germany? And what did he see in the young girl he met in Baltimore after returning home from the war?įrom the Jewish slums of pre-war Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to the penal utopia of a New York prison, from the heyday of the space programme to the twilight of 'the American Century', Moonglow collapses an era into a single life and a lifetime into a single week.

An old man, his tongue loosened by powerful painkillers, his memory stirred by the imminence of death, tells stories to his grandson, uncovering bits and pieces of a history long buried. Moonglow: a novel unfolding in a final, deathbed, confession.

How does a single life become a story and a story encapsulate a world? The world, like the Tower of Babel or my grandmother's deck of cards, was made out of stories, and it was always on the verge of collapse.

Moonglow chabon review