By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

This is a book about the first summer after college, an improbable time dizzying and dazzling in promised freedom, a time of bright hope for the future, when many of us decide who we will or will not be. It's also a cliche, a topic written about many times, and the kind of story that in lesser hands would make for a pretty dull book. But Chabon pulls all the tragic beauty and confusion from it. In the end, your left with a book stunning in its insight, so full of empathy that in many ways I feel it is better than it's more polished brethren. It's the kind of book a writer can only write once and I'm glad he did. I'm also glad he didn't try to do it again but rather moved on, became a polished fiction writer who relied more on his storytelling ability than past experience. I would call this book indespensible for any fan of Chabon's writing.


The Mysteries of Pittsburgh   March 18, 1998
 21 out of 22 found this review helpful

When you consider Chabon's age at the writing of this book, it becomes even more unbelievable. This is hands down the best book that I've read in the last five years; here is, finally, a concise, dramatic representation of our young generation in the full swing of hope and misery. Chabon avoids hackneyed situations, dialogue and emotions; he avoids sentimentality in its most over-used definition, but his outlook on the characters' relationships is cogent and convincing. I was left breathless by his ability to make us care for people, to show us, with a little humor, the dark sides of us all, and Chabon makes us all feel a little less ashamed of our involvement in life. He is a truly generous writer, in love with his work, and sensitive to the reader. His characters in this book represent us all, and he has, with a single first book, raised the stakes where modern writing is concerned. This book will be remembered for generations; it would be a sign of wisdom to recognize it now.


Counting Backwards   January 25, 2002
 13 out of 23 found this review helpful

I can't decide whether my reading this AFTER "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" is a good thing or a bad thing.

Let me explain.

I read Chabon's book of short stories a couple of years ago ("Werewolves in their Youth"), and it was alright but it didn't inspire me to read more. It took the advice of a friend to pick up "...Kavalier and Clay" and I'm glad I did because that book was head and shoulders above most everything else I read last year. It was so good that it sent me (counting backwards) to "Mysteries of Pittsburgh."

"Mysteries of Pittsburgh" is horrible. It is a horrible book. Why is it a horrible book? It is a horrible book because - if you looked up "first novel, problems therein" in a dictionary THERE WOULD BE A PICTURE OF THIS BOOK. Michael Chabon should not have called this book "Mysteries of Pittsburgh." He should have called it "I want to write "The Great Gatsby" only F Scott Fitzgerald beat me to it."

There is a guy called Art whose father is a gangster. Art befriends a gay guy (also called Arthur) and falls in love with a girl called Phlox (who is straight out of "The Breakfast Club"). He has a kind of affair with each of them. There is also a guy called Cleveland who is a rich guy on a fast track to trouble (I'm speaking in cliches because - hell, when the material demands cliches, you've gotta go with it).

If I had read "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" first, I would never have picked up another book by Michael Chabon again (even if the world went crazy over a book by him, I would avoid it). As it is, it seems to me that Michael Chabon sold his soul to the devil. The man is the authorial equivalent of Robert Johnson.

That is the only way I can imagine that the author responsible for "...Kavalier and Clay" is also responsible for this piece of appalling self-conscious tripe.


Despite Hype, It's Really Awful   August 3, 2000
 12 out of 21 found this review helpful

Call me a troglodyte if you like; I hated this book. It's the literary equivalent of being stuck watching someone standing on a stage slapping themselves with raw meat while reading from "Anna Karenina": simultaneously boring and baffling.

Slogging through this dull confessional style novel reminded me of every college summer I've ever lived in complete drunken baking boredom, where I sat on the cement by the Brady (a local coffeehouse), just waiting for it to end. The characters remind me of the pretentious idiots who hang out in that coffeehouse, making up stories about their lives to spread around and giving themselves bizarre names to make themselves seem more interesting. Its the kind of book where everyone you figure is going to have sex with one or more of the other characters does just that with exactly who you thought they would, and it turns out as bad as you feared. And like most on-campus summers, the end is suitably but predictably and numbingly tragic.

Absolutlely nothing actually occurred in this book until the last twenty pages, but by that time I just didn't care what happened to the stale, flat, and predicatable Arthur, Phlox, and Cleveland, much less their peripheral parents. Frankly, the most rounded character in this drawn out "boy finds self" diary is the dog owned by Cleveland's sometime girlfriend Jane.

My friend Brian says that I just didn't get it. He may be right. But really, despite the hype, I don't think there was much here to get. There's really no mystery to Pittsburgh here; the real mystery is why so many people find this book worth reading, much less again and again.


Prententious tripe   December 22, 2000
 12 out of 32 found this review helpful

This was such a precious, pretentious, contrived piece of self-absorbed twaddle, I can't comprehend the high ratings for this book. I fear that everyone who liked this book is as self-absorbed and precious as the characters in it. If so, then a law should be passed that those who loved this book she be required to wear a hat reading "I loved THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH" on airplanes, so that people like me will know whom not to sit next to, and avoid tedious conversations.