Ratings21
Average rating3.2
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s “astonishing” debut novel, about a son’s struggle to find his own identity and integrity (The New York Times). Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Moonglow, and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, is one of the most acclaimed talents in contemporary fiction. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, published when Chabon was just twenty-five, is the beautifully crafted debut that propelled him into the literary stratosphere. Art Bechstein may be too young to know what he wants to do with his life, but he knows what he doesn’t want: the life of his father, a man who laundered money for the mob. He spends the summer after graduation finding his own way, experimenting with a group of brilliant and seductive new friends: erudite Arthur Lecomte, who opens up new horizons for Art; mercurial Phlox, who confounds him at every turn; and Cleveland, a poetry-reciting biker who pulls him inevitably back into his father’s mobbed-up world. A New York Times bestseller, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh was called “astonishing” by Alice McDermott, and heralded the arrival of one of our era’s great voices. This ebook features a biography of the author.
Reviews with the most likes.
I've read a few Chabon novels now, and while I've never really loved any of them there's always something interesting there and the prose itself is very good.
Here, I liked the prose again, but I couldn't get into the characters or story at all. I probably would not have finished it if it were longer. I think it's just not my type of book, it reminded me of something like On The Road.
A pretty good novel, but this doesn't justify the mega-love people my age seem to have for Mr. Chabon. Maybe I started with the wrong book, but he didn't wow me like I was expecting.
I gave it one extra star for making me feel sentimental about Pittsburgh.
Wow. Summertime. Right after graduating from college. Chabon deftly captures the uncertainty, hope, sense of rootlessness, messy love affairs and the rapid alternations between feeling like summer is going to laze on forever, and the sense of urgency about wanting something exciting & earth-shattering to happen RIGHT. NOW. Plus it's sexy. Sometimes desperate, sometimes tender, but really, really sexy. And, perhaps oddly, the ending reminded me a bit of Brideshead Revisited, one of my most favoritest books of all time. So of course I'm sold.