Moonglow

On a clear night in blacked-out countryside, in between bomber runs, when the tracer fire ceased and the searchlights went dark, the stars did not fill the sky so much as coat it like hoarfrost on a windowpane. You looked up and saw The Starry Night, he told me; you realized that Van Gogh was a realist painter.

I honestly don't know what to rate this or what the review should say. I was not the ideal reader for much of it, and considered portions of the story to be a chore, but other portions I loved, and I'm glad I read it.

The grandfather character – I label him this because it's deliberately unclear what's true of Chabon's real grandfather and what's not – threw a cat out a third story window as a kid. And then this gets mentioned 2 or 3 more times. Why? I don't know, but I'm not exactly the ideal reader for this detail. And since fiction readers are more empathetic, I'm not sure who that ideal reader is.

I enjoyed that the story, not being linear, ended up this pleasing whole, that it cataloged much of a life, and the ups and downs of a marriage when one of the people has mental health issues.