The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon

I love Michael Chabon’s books. I really do. This is a totally biased, wonder-struck review of a novel that I probably wouldn’t have liked nearly as much if anyone else’s name had been on the cover. But the cover says Chabon, and therefore I will sing its praises.

“When I remember that dizzy summer, that dull, stupid, lovely, dire summer, it seems that in those days I ate my lunches, smelled another’s skin, noticed a shade of yellow, even simply sat, with greater lust and hopefulness – and that I lusted with greater faith, hoped with greater abandon. The people I loved were celebrities, surrounded by rumor and fanfare; the places I sat with them, movie lots and monuments. No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything.”

How could someone not love that kind of writing style? This is a book about an unsure young man beginning the final summer of his young adulthood. He meets new people, falls in love (with a member of each sex, and simultaneously, which proves to be a problem) and makes all sorts of mistakes. He doesn’t know what he wants to be when he “grows up”, which makes him easy to manipulate, and he doesn’t know who he loves, which tears him up.

It’s a very angsty book, full of privilege and drinking. This normally makes me crazy (Perks of Being a Wallflower, I’m looking at you) but it’s redeemed by two main things. 1: Chabon’s writing (I think I mentioned that…) and 2: the main character’s father is a real live gangster, so I think he deserves a bit of angst.