Yes, there is a threat to the future of Brokeland Records in the shape of ex-NFL quarterback Gibson Goode who plans to open a branded mega-mall known as a ‘Dogpile’ including a vast vinyl emporium that will surely wipe Brokeland from the map which in turn draws in a decades previous exploit involving Archy’s father, a briefly celebrated kung fu icon known as Luther Stallings who is these days, a former junkie, hiding out with his co-star from way back when, Valetta Moore, practicing blackmail in order to resurrect his dying fortunes, and Chan Flowers, a local funeral director and city councillor. Telegraph Ave is bigger and baggier and its centre is harder to locate. Nat and Archy are a complement, in a way, just as Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay were in The Amazing Adventures of, Nat with a history of mild mental illness, a tendency towards irrational mood swings and a deeply felt sense of the importance of preserving that which is in danger of being lost, Archy more chipper but no less flawed, given to dalliances, secrets, as much a product of his upbringing as a driver of damage to those around him but Telegraph Ave is not The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Later we learn that these two kids belong to the four adults around whom much of Telegraph Ave revolves – Nat Jaffe and Archy Stallings, a pair of guys who own a floundering vinyl exchange called Brokeland Records, and their wives, Aviva Roth-Jaffe and Gwen Shanks, who also run a business, albeit of a different kind, as midwives – but their appearance at the very beginning of the book strikes an interesting note of similarity with Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude and it’s a note that goes on being struck throughout the novel. The first characters we meet in Michael Chabon’s latest book slip by temporarily unnamed, a white boy riding a skateboard and a black boy pedalling a brakeless bike amid a ‘iss of tyres’ and a ‘[ranular unravelling of skateboard wheels against asphalt’.

Michael chabon telegraph avenue review