Synopses & Reviews
Werewolves in Their Youth takes us into the hearts and lives of young people and people in midlife caught at emotional moments of turning point and change. In the opening story, "Werewolves in Their Youth," a boy attempts to help a troubled classmate, only to uncover the even more perplexing troubles of the adults around them. In "House Hunting," a young couple mends their strained relationship during an appointment with a strange real estate broker. In the collection's chilling final story, "In the Black Mill," a student archaeologist travels to a small American city to conduct his fieldwork, and finds himself investigating the mysterious fates of the inhabitants.
Review
"[A] winning collection....Chabon is as witty as ever while dispensing with the glibness that sometimes marred his earlier work. His characters, even whey they are silly and flawed, come across as sympathetic, three-dimensional human beings." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Mr. Chabon writes with enormous fluency in these pages, captivating the reader with his descriptive and metaphoric powers." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Review
"A loving craftsman and the author of superb, seemingly alchemically rendered sentences, Chabon has been producing pitch-perfect, at times even dazzling, fiction....While his language has relinquished none of its vividness, Chabon has mellowed it into an elegant vessel of irony and empathy." Michael Carroll, Los Angeles Times Book Review
Review
"A mixed second collection....Chabon is a stylist...whose finely crafted sentences unfortunately don't add up to very interesting narratives." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"When you read these stories, it may strike you how seldom you come across really beautiful writing....It's truthful and lyrical, and it bestows on these troubled children of his imagination a measure of grace." Susan Kelly, USA Today
Review
"[U]nlike Fitzgerald, Chabon is too fond of his characters to send them hurtling into the abyss. He always gives them one last chance to make good. In some cases...this affection makes for his loveliest stories; in others...it crosses the line into sentimentality. It also creates a certain sameness of rhythm that you wish Chabon would try harder to break. Still, without their author's generosity of spirit and his sense of humor, these stories would lose a considerable part of their charm. And charm is an undervalued quality these days, in fiction as in life." Adam Goodheart, Salon.com
Review
"This is a wonderful book of short stories, but an odd one, even odder, in fact, than its self-consciously attention-grabbing title suggests." Book Magazine
Review
"He's Updike without the condescension, Cheever without the self-pity, a young American Nabokov who writes with a rueful joie de vivre from within his own culture." James Hynes, The Washington Post Book World
Review
"What's most alive in this book is the witty and resonant prose that has always been Chabon's strength, a prose in which sharp observation shades into metaphor..." Michael Gorra, The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
The author of Wonder Boys returns with a powerful and wonderfully written collection of stories. Caught at moments of change, Chabon's men and women, children and husbands and wives, all face small but momentous decisions. They are caught in events that will crystallize and define their lives forever, and with each, Michael Chabon brings his unique vision and uncanny understanding of our deepest mysteries and our greatest fears.
Synopsis
The author of
Wonder Boys returns with a powerful and wonderfully written collection of stories. Caught at moments of change, Chabon's men and women, children and husbands and wives, all face small but momentous decisions. They are caught in events that will crystallize and define their lives forever, and with each, Michael Chabon brings his unique vision and uncanny understanding of our deepest mysteries and our greatest fears.
About the Author
Michael Chabon is the author of two novels,
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and
Wonder Boys, and of a previous collection of stories,
A Model World. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and two children.
Table of Contents
Werewolves in their Youth 3
House Hunting 31
Son of the Wolfman 52
Green's Book 83
Mrs. Box 106
Spikes 125
The Harris Fetko Story 140
That was me 164
In the Black Mill 185