Helpful Score: 3
An interesting story about a young man spending a summer trying to discover himself, through relationships with men and women, in a Pittsburgh made strange with wonder. This was Chabon's first book, and that shows in the writing sometimes. This paperback edition includes an essay by him about writing it.
Helpful Score: 2
All in all it's not a BAD read, but not one of my favorites. It starts off slow - doesn't honestly keep your attention until 30 pages in. The characters are flat at times, the story line seemed a bit too jumpy.
I only liked certain parts of this book, but for the most part, the characters didn't seem very real.
In Michael Chabon's debut novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Art Bechstein has just graduated from college in Pittsburgh and meets a set of interesting characters during the ensuing summer. It's meant to evoke a larger sense of wonder, in the tradition of The Great Gatsby, but most of the novel seems to be downtime for the somewhat confused protagonist and his stranger-than-life social circle of that summer. There are the interesting imagery and turns of phrase which are characteristic of Chabon's other writing, but perhaps I needed to read his essay on the writing of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh at the end of the volume to clue myself into this story, his master's thesis at the University of California at Irvine turned bestseller.
This is one of those novels that while I was a freshman in college, I was all over it. But as an adult, I started to see the imperfections. It's a breezy read and has some great moments, but don't expect much from the characters. They're flat and predictable for the most part.
This was the first Cahbon book I read, and I really enjoyed it. It sparked a mission to find more. But really, why are all his characters gay?
