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mattgroot1980's review against another edition
3.0
Books of short stories are hard to rate. Some of these stories are brilliant. Some I found pretty lacklustre. So it gets a 3 over all.
capowcapow's review against another edition
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
dangrous's review against another edition
4.0
I liked these short stories! Though the one where he tries to not have a slightly nerdy character ultimately fails to sounds like a football player, but other than that, classic Chabon, and entertaining to read.
emilyjbridges's review against another edition
3.0
I don't have too much to say about this one - I'm just not that fond of collections of short stories.
craigwallwork's review against another edition
3.0
In comparison to his novels, I found Chabon’s short prose a little lacklustre. Nearly all of the stories fell flat, as if Chabon had run out of steam, or interest in the story and just decided to end it. Perhaps it’s a literary gimmick whereby the author is permitted, one you’ve garnered the support of critics, to provide only a beginning and middle to a story, allowing the end to be written in the mind of the reader, which is fine for maybe one or two of the stories, but nearly all felt disowned by the author. It gets three stars purely because there’s some wonderful phrasing in this collection, but had I measured this book on just its characters and narratives, I’d be tendering a disappointingly two stars. What surprised me more is that a large portion of the work featured in this collection also appeared in such regarded magazines as Playboy The New Yorker and Esquire.
philippurserhallard's review against another edition
4.0
Chabon's a brilliant writer, but I didn't feel his imagination had the room to unfurl itself in these short stories. Though told from various points of view and with some clever variants, these are all essentially portraits of middle-class American marriages in collapse. They're well-written and fun -- except when Chabon strays into the area of US sports, making no concessions to the ignorant reader and becoming completely impenetrable -- but basically inconsequential. The one exception is the final story, "In the Black Mill", an exuberant and loving Lovecraft parody attributed to the nonexistent pulp author August Van Zorn, which nonetheless manages -- if I'm reading it correctly -- to implicate the unthinking antisemitism of Lovecraft and some of his pulp-writing peers in the attitudes which led to the Holocaust.
knightedbooks's review against another edition
2.0
My least favorite of his books so far. Maybe it was just being in training at the time that ruined it for me?
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