A review by craigwallwork
Werewolves in Their Youth: Stories by Michael Chabon

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.