Not my favorite Chabon novel, in fact, it didn't really feel like a Chabon novel compared to the others that I've read and loved. Still had some lovely writing, but I just didn't connect to it in the way I did Kavalier & Clay or The Yiddish Policeman's Union. ( )

A little over written in places and a little too long at the house for Passover but a great read with plenty of metaphor and trope. Sometimes a little too glib. I enjoyed the movie and the characters and film was in mind when I read the novel. The story was different enough and the ending pulled it up from a 4 to a 4.5. One of the few truly great endings read in the last months. ( )

This is one of the funniest, weirdest, most pot-soaked picaresque adventure novels of academia I have read in ages. Others have said about it - "beautiful and very funny" ... "an exuberant, laugh-a-page barn-burner ... strongly sexual and darkly absurd" ... "captures ... the shame and terror of authorship" ... "flawlessly crafted" ... "A fabulous romp" ... and "reading the book is a joy." Indeed. All of that and more!

WONDER BOYS (1995) was Michael Chabon's second novel. I read his first one, MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH, years ago and loved it. After reading this one, it's clear there was no "sophomore slump" for Chabon, but he is obviously poking fun at that concept, but in a compassionate sort of way, because you can't help but feel some pity for his happless writer protagonist, Grady Tripp, whose current novel has stalled at over 1,200 pages and seven years in.

since WONDER BOYS has already been reviewed a couple thousand times, I feel no need to summarize it. I will say I was reminded of John Barth's early novel of academia, THE END OF THE ROAD, and also Bernard Malamud's A NEW LIFE (a personal favorite). But this one is longer, much funnier - and in a category all its own. I loved reading it. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )

Every other Michael Chabon novel that I have read has started out so slow that I've abandoned it for months at a time, but ultimately has been profound and moving and made me feel like I have a place in the universe. Wonder Boys did the opposite. Despite it's easy readability, Wonder Boys made me feel hated, like the world for which it's written or is found funny is a world that is antithetical to people like me.

About a quarter of the way through, I realized that I'd seen and hated the movie. That added to the feel of the novel, to be honest -- this is a novel about people using drugs and alcohol to self-medicate the sort of depression that comes not from any sort of psychopathology, but rather the reasonable self-loathing if you're the sort of dick to do idiotic things while under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Not surprisingly, this becomes a downward spiral of totally unsympathetic assholes continuing to do idiotic things then self-medicate further, then become more of a self-absorbed asshole who does even more idiotic things. I read the book with a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, anticipating how things could possibly get even worse. Knowing the specific form the devolution takes from watching the movie added to the ambiance, so to speak.

So why two stars? The second star comes entirely from a Passover seder scene that is laugh-out-loud funny. Fights over what to put in the second seder plate space for bitter herbs (or even how to pronounce "Chazeret") are reminiscent to every Jewish home and also to what I love about most Chabon novels. It was like a breath of fresh air (before that, too, became another drug-using, drunk-driving, pet-killing rampage) ( )

This is wonderful farce. A whole series of elements - characters, objects, promises - are introduced over the first one hundred and fifty pages which then must be dealt with in the remaining two hundred. It all belongs in a very particular genre - a sort of light but worthy literary fiction which really is as formulaic as detective fiction - which I quite enjoy.

The prose is clear and companionable and often witty, the characters are either likeable or hateable in just the right ways and the plot is perfectly placed and well-crafted. I suspect the whole thing has a boyish complacency that might send some women readers mad, but if you tend to give men a bit more indulgence than they deserve, this book is a fun and rewarding read. ( )