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A review by halschrieve
Werewolves in Their Youth: Stories by Michael Chabon
3.0
I love Michael Chabon, but this early collection, while it has its gems, is fairly painful for me to read when I compare it with his later more nuanced masterpieces. It is too masculine, too obsessed with fatherhood and death and grim conclusions, and absent almost entirely the engagement with sympathy and love that makes Chabon the least grating of exuberantly male fiction writers. The last story is overtly Lovecraftian and also racist--while it starts out as a folk tale about an industrial town being slowly eaten by the machines that it operates, it ends as a bizarre Indian Curse thing that just left me nauseous and somehow managed to be misogynist at the same time.
The title story is one of the best in the book ; there is also a funny one about a Brit that foreshadows Chabon's interest in the meaning of Jewish fatherhood and in sportsmanship. The main good things about this book involve seeing the evolution of Chabon as a writer. I give it three stars because I like the guy in general and think it's worth looking at if you like him, though I probably would check it out from a library .
The title story is one of the best in the book ; there is also a funny one about a Brit that foreshadows Chabon's interest in the meaning of Jewish fatherhood and in sportsmanship. The main good things about this book involve seeing the evolution of Chabon as a writer. I give it three stars because I like the guy in general and think it's worth looking at if you like him, though I probably would check it out from a library .