The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

April 1, 1989
First-novelist Chabon, with ``distinctive vision'' and ``an elegiac, graceful style,'' spins a story about alienated youth that, while serving up some familiar details of sex, alcohol and drugs, ``fully engages the reader in the lives of an appealing cast of characters,'' said PW .

Michael Chabon started work on this debut novel when he was an undergraduate. The book is driven by poetic turns of phrase, literary arabesques of description, and earnest flights of emotion that make it difficult to create believable characters for the audio performance. Initially, narrator Chris Andrew Ciulla seems a poor fit, but as the story progresses, he settles into its rhythm and finds a way to bring realism to most of the awkward, romantic characters without making them seem flat, affected, or too stereotypical. Sometimes the men's voices blend together, and without dialogue tags, it's easy to lose track of which character is speaking. Overall, though, this is a fair performance of a good but inconsistent novel. D.L.Y. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine