'To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate'

Summerland

Summerland

Michael Chabon

An unforgettable novel from one of America’s greatest living storytellers, ‘Summerland’ is about redemption and the true nature of heroism.

Ethan is a young hero on a quest though the strange world of American Faery. Since baseball is the favourite game of American fairies, or ‘ferishers’ as the North American Fairy Folk call themselves, this is necessarily a story of baseball, too. Zeppelins, werefoxes, Indians and Indian mythology, sasquatches, wendigos, Alaska, the haunted 161-year-old husk of George Armstrong Custer, and a boy who thinks he’s an android, also figure in the action. Along the way, the hero and heroine find themselves and each other; a band of ferishers triumphs over their ancient enemy and finally find someone new to play baseball against; a widower’s heart will heal as his airship conquers the northern sky; and a burned-out Colombian slugger named Rodrigo Buendia will find redemption in discovering, with Ethan Feld and Jennifer T. Rideout, the true nature of heroism.

Reviews of Summerland

    • ‘An epic fantasy for modern America.’ Sunday Times
    • ‘Chabon’s quirky, fluent style holds no hint of condescension and is sprinkled with wry remarks that will delight the young teenager.’ Daily Telegraph
    • ‘Perhaps the surest sign of “Summerland’s success is how the language of Chabon’s fictional universe stays with you and the way he achieves a sweet genuinely affecting ending.’ Time Out
    • Praise for ‘The Yiddish Policemen’s Union’:
    • ‘His almost ecstatically smart and sassy new novel…Chabon is a spectacular writer…a language magician. He has you laughing out loud, applauding the fun he has with language and the way he takes the task of a writer and runs delighted rings around it.’ Guardian
    • ‘Michael Chabon’s brilliant new novel starts with a bang…It hums with humour. It buzzes with gags…the accumulated reading experience is one of admiration, close to awe, at the vigour of Chabon’s imagination…a hilarious, antic whirl of a novel.’ Sunday Times
    • ‘It makes film noir look like film blanc by comparison.’ Arena

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