"Gentlemen Of The Road" by Michael Chabon; 9/10

Read By Andre Braugher...

AKA Detective Pembleton from the show "Homicide," a dude who has a marvelous voice.  Just as I think there is some special quality that certain English voice actors bring to the table that Americans just can't hope to match, it is my provincial belief that nobody can bring gravitas with a voice quite like an aging black actor.  Braugher, though less well-known than Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones, or Ossie Davis, has some quality of voice that brings a number of qualities to this audio book.  It took a little getting used to, especially given the setting of the book, but he just kept growing and growing on me right through the final line.

Speaking of the final line, here's an interesting literary point to consider.  I find that I far more often remember an opening passage of a book that I find memorable, even though the reading of it is farther removed from the present by time.  The number of opening lines I remember with great clarity ("Neuromancer," "1984," "Lolita," "Moby Dick," or anything by Charles Dickens, for example), vastly surpasses the number of books whose closing line I can recite.  Yet I think I find the instances of the latter far more satisfying than the former.  Whether this is because the bar is higher, the instances are rarer, or because I find a good more important than a good beginning I couldn't say. Consider, for a well-known example, "The Great Gatsby." I just find that last line so moving and profound in a way these other examples don't quite reach.

Anyways, as you may have by now guessed, I loved the final line of "Gentlemen Of The Road." It was probably the best line in the entire book, not that there was any shortage of good lines, but it happens to be a doozy of a closer.

Chabon is a major believer in tearing down the walls which have separated genre (mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, romance, etc) from the sacred garden of "literature."  In this attempt he is not alone, and I would say that with Susannah Clarke and Neil Gaiman, among others, he has already succeeded in eliminating whatever of such distinctions ever existed for me.  Chabon is special, however, because he first made it as a literary establishment type and then wrote genre things- so the literary world subsequently took notice.  This novel(la) was originally published in four parts in the New Yorker.

"Gentlemen Of The Road" was originally titled "Jews With Swords," and is Chabon's swashbuckling epic story in the vein of an Alexandre Dumas book, except set in the hitherto-little-explored (as far I know...) regions of Kazarian history.  It is an easy and quick read, which seems unchallenging in its subject, and yet goes deeper than you think it possibly can over and over again.  The two protagonists are of primary utility in this regard, and I still think of them as imaginary friends with whom I shared a great adventure years ago.  Braugher, too, was of great assistance in helping me appreciate the belied complexity of this work.  Thanks, Detective!

I will definitely be rereading this book. If you give it a first time, Braugher's reading is strongly recommended.