Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Werewolves in Their Youth (1999)by Michael Chabon
Books Read in 2023 (2,882) Animals in the Title (364) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. My least favorite of his books so far. Maybe it was just being in training at the time that ruined it for me? ( ) Stories with characters who never quite got a grip on life and encountered such turbulence that they lost what little they had, though through some alchemy of mischance a few get knocked back into a better positions. The stew of inept anger and inarticulate guilt, sexual, social, professional is all very recognizable. This is a really good (IMO) early collection of stories by Chabon. Stories about the human condition with a little twist. The title story in on boys playing at werewolves, Son of the Wolfman is on a husband's reaction when his childless wife decides to keep the baby from a rape, and Mrs. Box is on a man who tries to rob his ex-wife's grandmother. The last story, interestingly is a gothic/lovecraftian horror story told by a fictitious author who is introduced to us by the main character of Chabon's 2nd novel The Wonder Boys (Son of the Wolfman) The front porch had been overwhelmed years before by a salmon pink bougainvillea, and a disheveled palm tree murmured in the backyard, battering the roof at night with inedible nuts. It had been fall, the only season in Southern California that made any lasting claim on the emotions (Spikes) She yearned to have a child. Kohn was an Easterner, socially awkward, obsessive. He was an instrument maker who built custom electric guitars, mostly for the Japanese market, and he preferred to keep his own yearnings pressed between the clear panes of a marijuana habit where he could safely observe them. A paired look at Rohinton Mistry Tales from Firozsha Baag and Michael Chabon Werewolves in Their Youth. I chanced upon these back to back, both short story collections, both by writers in their working youth – Mistry’s first book and an early one for Chabon. Both as much as anything nostalgic, bittersweet recollections of childhood, the middle class childhoods of their own existences. Chabon: laugh out loud funny – you know…so that it gets almost irritating for those who are suffering through your pleasure. They start sounding snarky when they say they must read it too. The guy’s brilliant, this collection is splendid. Mistry: the blurb says ‘extremely funny’. But the only good thing about the shit of his world – and I mean that literally, the shit on the street, the upstairs lavatory that leaks onto your head as you sit on the toilet, the filth, the water supply turned off at 6am because the city is without again, the monsoonal water running down the inside of your house – the good thing about it is that this is all happening to middle class educated people, the same ones who, had they lived in Chabon’s childhood, would have been clean and without want. This life he writes of is the relatively privileged existence one can have in India, that’s what I mean by ‘good’. I mean, there is a worse life. I couldn’t imagine anything less hilarious. I could not imagine anything, if it comes to that, less ‘compassionate’ – another promise of the blurb. I don’t know that Mistry is ever the victim of that sentiment, but certainly not in this book. rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/chabon-and-mistry-short-s... no reviews | add a review
By the New York Times-bestselling author of Moonglow: "When you read these stories, it may strike you how seldom you come across really beautiful writing" (USA Today). Cherished by readers and critics alike for such extraordinary novels as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, and Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon is at the height of his considerable powers in this striking and bittersweet collection of short stories. An anxious young misfit does nothing to protect his best friend from the scorn of their teachers and classmates. A kleptomaniac real estate agent leads an unhappy couple on a disastrous house tour. A heartbroken grifter finds his ex-girlfriend's grandmother to be an easy mark--and an unexpected source of redemption. Throughout these stories, Chabon's characters, suffused with yearning but crippled by broken love, often find themselves at a crossroads--and faced with sudden insight. Michael Chabon is "Updike without the condescension," wrote James Hynes in the Washington Post Book World, "Cheever without the self-pity, a young American Nabokov who writes with a rueful joie de vivre." In this darkly funny, achingly delicate collection, he renders the compromises of adulthood and the vivid fantasies of childhood with clarity and warmth. This ebook features a biography of the author. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |