SOURCE: “Hope Against Hope,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 8, 2000, p. 2.

In the following review of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Levi commends Chabon's prose and narrative skill, but concludes that the novel lacks passion.

Gadzooks! The Amazing Adventurers of Kavalier & Clay. Not since the Celebrated Mr. Kite have such superheroes been trumpeted with such promise and panache. And though Michael Chabon, who burst upon the literary scene 15 years ago with The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, may be no John Lennon, his broadsheet of a title announces a center-ring spectacle as entertaining as any circus act, even without Henry the Horse.

Kavalier is young Josef Kavalier, a child of pre-World War II Prague, born to a professional secular Jewish family, in a time before tragedy. But as he grows into his late teens, the grip of Hitler tightens around his country and his city. It is Josef's...