Moonglow by Michael Chabon, book review: It playfully teases the reader at every turn

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Described as each in turn, Michael Chabon’s new book Moonglow vacillates between multiple guises, playfully teasing the reader at every turn. Put the whole thing in proper chronological order, not this mishmash I’m making you.” Chabon definitely makes it mean something – a tender love story between two damaged people – what he doesn’t do, however, is set it forth in chronological order. He’s haunted by what he’s seen, and by the figure of Wernher von Braun, the aerospace engineer who invented the missile for Nazi Germany and thereafter the Saturn V rocket for Nasa in the US. “In preparing this memoir,” he explains in the author’s note that precedes the work, “I have stuck to facts except when facts refused to conform with memory, narrative purpose, or the truth as I prefer to understand it.” Whether fact or fiction, it’s undeniably a masterclass in storytelling.