“My grandfather”’s story covers the better part of the twentieth century, which, of course means the worse - and the worst - parts. These confessions are delivered under the influence of heavy-duty, tongue-loosening hydromorphone prescribed against the pain of end-stage bone-cancer, to the care of “Mike Chabon,” a writer fresh off the publication of his first book, who adds to them the gloss of his own experience, his mother’s commentary and his own subsequent investigation (which produces, in one case, a gasp-inducing revelation or, anyway, I gasped, and I’m not generally a reader given to gasping). “Moonglow” collects the purported deathbed recollections of “my grandfather,” who, like his wife, or “my grandmother,” and daughter (“my mother”), goes unnamed for the duration of the 400+ page book. (An author’s note also suggests that mischief is afoot: “In preparing this memoir, I have stuck to facts except when facts refused to conform with memory, narrative purpose, or the truth as a I prefer to understand it,” it reads in part.)
And yet complications abound from the get-go, as one might expect from a writer who has done more than most to complicate what genre works can do and be and how they might be critically received. Michael Chabon’s new novel, “Moonglow,” initially presents itself as a fairly straightforward memoir.
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