As I read the book I find it very interesting how Michael Chabon writes it. Throughout the novel he stages the characters situations and events in separate chapters. In doing this Chabon builds up to a climax in one chapter yet fails to reveal the climax or he does not reveal the details or cause of what was read. After doing so he goes on to another section and reveals what had happened through another set of events. While reading it I get all curious as to what will happen next and feel more compelled to read the next chapter in order to see what happened. For example, in one scene, Joe had barely escaped carbon monoxide poisoning which had wiped out almost all of his troops, Chabon doesn't reveal the force of destruction, leaving you clueless until the next chapter. "The air seemed unnaturally stuffy and far too warm, and as he stood there, listening for the usual congested snuffling of the men, his dizziness increased. The weight of the dog in his arms grew intolerable. Oyster fell from his arms and hit the plank floor with a thud. The sound made Joe gag. He stumbled to his left, wildly veering to avoid touching any of the bunks he walked between or the men lying in them, toward the light switch. No one protested or rolled away from the blaze of light. Houl was dead; Mitchell was dead; Gedman was dead, That was as far as Joe got in his investigations before a sudden
desperate understanding drove him to the ladder that led up through the hatch in the roof of the Waldorf and out onto the ice. Coatless bareheaded, feet clad only in socks, he stumbled topside across the jagged skin of the snow. The cold jerked at his chest like a wire snare. It fell on him like a safe. It lapped eagerly at his unprotected feet and licked at his kneecaps. He took great breaths of that clean and wicked coldness, thanking it with every cell in his body. He heard his exhalations rustle like taffeta as they froze solid in the air around him.  His bloomed filled with oxygen, quickening the nerves of his eyes, and the dark dull sky over his head seemed to thicken suddenly with stars. He reached an instant of bodily equipoise, during which the rapture of his survival to breathe and be burned by the wind perfectly balanced the agony of his exposure to it Then the shivering took hold, in a single crippling shudder that racked his whole body, and he cried out, and fell to his knees on the ice" In the next chapter he reveals the cause of the terror. "The radio is out? Johnny, why is the radio out?" In his panic, the melodramatic notion worthy of one of Sam's plot, that Johnny was a German spy and had killed them all streaked through his thoughts, "What is going on?" "Relax, Dopey, all right? Please do not lose your shit." "Johnny." Joe said, as calmly as he could, letting out smoke, "I feel that I am going to lose my shit." "Look here, the fellows are dead and the radio is out, but there is no connection between the two. One has nothing to do with the other, like everything else in life. It was not some Nazi superweapon. Jesus Christ, It was the fucking stove." "The stove?" "It was carbon monoxide."