A review by ssiller12
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

5.0

As an avid Chabon reader, this novel quickly became my favorite of his works. Over the course of a few hours, the reader falls deeply into the tragic world of the writer Grady Tripp, stumbling along after him on his miserable, fool-hearty, and comical quest whose end comes much too suddenly. You grow comfortable but never complacent riding in the backseat of Grady's Galaxie as he picks up and abandons an assemblage of characters, issues, and carnage whose relative import all seem backwards. Never before has a tuba seemed more influential and intriguing than a transvestite.
Chabon plays cleverly with the notion of narrative and authorship, and you are never quite sure if you are experiencing Grady's life or his story. Chabon truly drops you into a complete world, introducing elements as if they are obvious and understood and then ignoring them, leaving them unanswered and unaccounted for, until returning to them at the most unexpected moment. No detail goes unaccounted for. Every added element seems inevitable, and you fall easily into the role of the author, wondering how this universe could ever be complete without it. You are intertwined into Grady's mind, and its a hell of a ride, but oh what a relief to be able to leave it at the end.