by Michael Chabon
Library Journal
: Starred Review. This collection of previously published essays by the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is both lyrical and side-splittingly funny. In each autobiographical composition, the self-deprecating Chabon reveals facets of his ongoing evolution into "manhood." His most resonant role, as father, finds him reviling the "provided solutions" and "pre-imagined environments" of contemporary toys and advocating that children "mock capitalism and the uses to which it seeks to put them." Chabon also notes the infrequency with which today's kids are left to their own devices; there is "no space…free of adult supervision, adult mediation, adult control" so that kids can, as did he, simply ride bikes or mess around. The writing makes epic the mundane, such as his teenaged adventure leading his young brother across an unfamiliar cityscape, or a rant on "crap" that manages to both skewer and celebrate pop culture past (Planet of the Apes TV series) and present ("family movies"). VERDICT Readers seeking the intelligence of Updike; the gentle, brainy appeal of Sedaris; or the literary virtuosity of Nabokov will thoroughly enjoy what the publisher bills as Chabon's first major nonfiction work. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/09.]—Douglas C. Lord, Connecticut State Lib., Hartford Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions Inc. Terms
Publishers Weekly
: An entertaining omnibus of opinionated essays previously published mostly in Details magazine spotlights novelist Chabon's (The Yiddish Policemen's Union) model of being an attentive, honest father and a fairly observant Jew. Living in Berkeley, Calif., raising four children with his wife, Ayelet Waldman, who has also just published a collection of parenting stories (Bad Mother), Chabon, at 45, revisits his own years growing up in the 1970s with a mixture of rue and relief. A child of the suburbs of Maryland and elsewhere, where children could still play in what he calls in one essay the Wilderness of Childhood, he enjoyed a freedom now lost to kids, endured the divorce of his parents, smoked a lot of pot, suffered a short early marriage and finally found his life's partner, who takes risks where he won't. The essays are tidily arranged around themes of manly affection (his first father-in-law, his younger brother); styles of manhood, such as faking at being a handyman; and patterns of early enchantment, such as his delight in comic books, sci-fi and stargazing. Candid, warm and humorous, Chabon's essays display his habitual attention to craft. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions Inc. Terms
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