The Final Solution by Michael Chabon

This was not for me. Michael Chabon is an accomplished writer, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a novel published to resounding praise. A widely respected and awarded author, I have been a fan since reading his debut novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh in 1988, written when he was 24. Somehow, I found The Final Solution - A Story Of Detection a non-event.

In midsummer 1944, the old man observes the young boy walking along the Brighton-Eastbourne railway line with a parrot on his shoulder, Bruno, his only friend. They form a friendship, although the boy is unspeaking, and Bruno speaks only German, reciting lines of numbers and quoting bits of Goethe. The boy is Linus Steadman, an orphaned refugee who emigrated to Britain with Bruno, living with the Panicker family and their lodgers, Mr. Parkins, an archaeological historian, and Mr. Shane, a traveler in milk equipment for the National Research Dairy. Mrs. Panicker is an Oxfordshire woman who married a Malayalee from Kerala, a locally unpopular Anglican vicar, and their grown son Reggie is a gambler, liar, and malcontent. Detective Inspector Bellows and Constable Quint arrive when Mr. Shane is found struck dead by a blow to his head, and the parrot disappears. Reggie is arrested. The old man promises Linus he will find Bruno, and leaves his retirement hobby of beekeeping to help the detectives, as Mr. Kalb from the Aid Committee tends to Linus.

A wartime England setting, quirky characters, and a mystery to solve would seem exactly like what I like, but this was hard to finish. It may have been an emphasis more on language than story or pace, but this did not engage me at all, even when they traveled through Sussex and East Grinstead, where I spent several summers. This received high praise ("A prose magician," "deftly composed," "a profound pleasure"), so I must be the anomaly. I even like the cover art, but the pieces of this did not add up to an enjoyable read.

2004 / Tradeback / 160 pages