Rating: 
Summary: Vivid Characters Provide Truth In Fiction
Review: Michael Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, has to be the best peice of fiction I've ever read. The dramatic and exaggerated antics of Art, Arthur, Phlox and company paint widely drawn but finely detailed charachters, whom the reader comes to fiercely love by the novel's end. The drama-queen behaviors of Arthur and Phlox and the baseness and blunt truth of Cleveland and Jane do not mimic, as in so many other novels, the real actions of people, yet come at you with honesty, and Chabon makes them so human you come to feel you know them. These characters make the novel ring true every step of the way, and their vivid, face-slapping real-ness makes "The Mysteries..." seem more of an autobiography than a fictional account of the poingancy of loss of youth. The last paragraph of the book makes it all come together, a youthful admittance and half-apology for the common tendency of the young to add to the truth. The allowance that "as usual, I have probably exaggerated everything" only makes the book, the narrator, and his friends more believable.
Rating:
Summary: A Novel that's found a voice
Review: Post-undergraduate lonliness is the subject of many a boring and formulaic attempt at literature, but Chabon tackles it with a perfect combination of a realistic narrative with overly dramatic events. The narrator's personality is truly well-defined, and the reader understands what he's going through at every step of the book. The story is exciting and pulls you along with it. The book melds imaginitive and over-the-top creativity with elements of everyday living that any reader can identify with. As enjoyable as a threepenny airport thriller with the intelligence and beauty of great literature
Rating:
Summary: As good a young writer as there is.
Review: It has been a year since I read this book and it still haunts me. Coming of age novels written by a 24 year old are not generally by 51 year old cup of tea, but Chabon is simply a magical writer. I had reread Catcher in the Rye just before reading this and Chabon wins handsdown in my view. The descriptions are as close to real life as it gets and the characters have at least three dimensions. Chabon's other novel and his book of short stories are not as strong as this book, but he is definitely worth watching and reading
Rating: 
Summary: Very good book---especially if you know Pittsburgh
Review: This is a wonderful novel about youth, occupation, and
parental relations. And if you think you've got problems,
the narrator has to deal with a father in the mob,
a girlfriend and a boyfriend, and a weird circle of
friends. (It's even better if you've lived in the Oakland
area of Pittsburgh and can recognize the local landmarks.)
Definitely a good piece of literature---don't be fooled by
the title.
Rating:
Summary: Micheal Chabon's great debut
Review: Micheal Chabon's novel "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is sugar for the eyes.
In my opinion, this novel helps us to get to know us better. The relationships between the protagonist and a girl, his father, his best friend and his gay friend probably are able to show us some useful facts about love, friendship, family affairs and sexuality. Because of the protagonist being about 23 makes it easy to transfer his problems in the situations of us as teenagers. The development of the main character getting out of his childhood and learning to get independent and self confident somehow is an instruction for how to live our lives.
Reading it at school is in my opinion not so suitable, because the volume of interpretations is almost incountable and takes too much time. Also the colloquial language used by Chabon will maybe be disliked by a lot of teachers.
So it is better to read the novel in your freetime and to get your own picture of it, than to deal with it at school.
Rating: 
Summary: nothing exceeds like excess
Review: It pains me to only give a Michael Chabon book 3 stars, but I'm trying to be honest and realistic, two traits alien to The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. While the finer, everyday points are brilliantly lucid and tangible, it's the bigger picture that gets meretriciously fudged. A Jewish gangster with a Whinnie the Pooh voice, an bitchy gay lover, a girl named "Phlox" (forget that she's a spaz - her name is Phlox), a prototypical 1980's goofy outsider sidekick ready with quippy answers to life - I kept waiting for Art Bechstein, the main character, to turn into Teen Wolf. Where in "Wonder Boys" and even "Werewolves in their Youth" Chabon paints the most amazingly tangible cast of characters, makes the quotidian seem fascinating and important, in Mysteries it just doesn't fly. Apart from knowing Art's dad will not like what he does, and that Arthur will undoubtedly be a brat, it's near impossible to even get a leg up on a clue of an insight of what is going on in these jumbled characters' heads. Male tears (lots of them), rough sex, a girl called Mau Mau - it was just a bit too much.
I can't help but feel let down by Mysteries after having read Wonder Boys first (no wonder its about an author struggling with his editor to get a book right), especially being such a huge, huge fan of Chabon's (I will now gleefully devour Kavalier and Klay as my next read). But all of that being said, I don't regret having read Mysteries for a second. The trademark graceful, fluid writing is there, and entertains in spite of the story. Like the other reviewer eluded to - it is a bit exciting seeing a "flawed" Chabon writing, perhaps like looking at the sketches of a master painter.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful, light touch.
Review: This book is most appreciated, I believe, if you do not know much about it, so I will be careful. It is the story of Art Bechstein's summer after college graduation, a summer of maturation and change. It is also the story of his friends, people who think of themselves as very special and important, and Chabon enables the reader to think so as well - one reviewer's comparison to Fitzgerald is apt. There is a lot of drinking, sex and soft drugs, but these activities are there only as part of the narrative flow: the focus is on the characters and their relationships. The characters often have fun, and so does the reader. Chabon has a scriptwriter's talents for scenes and dialogue (he did receive writing credits for the script of Wonder Boys, based on his second novel), and a sprightly, inventive prose style. Mysteries of Pittsburgh is written with a delightful, light touch, while not shying away from the unpleasant. Having said all this, I cannot fully explain why I liked this novel so much.
Rating:
Summary: gay youth, hyperbolic dialogue, college life, and gangsters
Review: This book was intially released under an avalanche of hype and high expectations. "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" was the next "Catcher in the Rye" or "Huckleberry Finn," it's main character Art Bechstein was the next Holden Caulfield, and it's author Michael Chabon was the next big thing.
But only one of those things turned out to be true. Michael Chabon WAS the next big thing, but that only became evident with the publication of the thematically similar "Wonder Boys" and then the sweeping giagantic "Kavalier and Klay." If anything, "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" feels like a draft of "Wonder Boys." Both deal with closeted gay youth coming of age in Pittsburgh, where as "Kavalier and Klay" dealt with closeted gay youth coming of age in Budapest, New York, and Antarctica.
The book, however, handles sexual confusion perhaps better than any other book I've ever read. As the characters bounce from bed to bed, from boys to girls and back again, as they are initiated into homosexual sex and then quickly revert to heterosexual sex, it's all done honestly and plausibly, and I'm not sure that even readers troubled by gay themes would be bothered. However, one has to still admit that it's these themes that will always keep "Mysteries of Pittburgh" from being the next "Catcher in the Rye," just because it's frequently difficult to identify with these characters' sexual confusion, even if we believe it.
Still, this is a book I return to time and time again, probably because the writing--on a sentence by sentence level--is so profoundly excellent, and it's brisk depiction of college life still feels completely true. The book could in fact take place in any time in any college town, and the only indication of the date is a brief mention by Chabon that Adam Ant's "Goody-Two Shoes" is a big hit that summer (1982).
The characters, however, seem to live in another time. Pop culture references are always to Franco Zeferelli movies and the by-gone stars of the 1940s. The characters head out to an Ella Fitzgerald concert one evening, even tho' this is post punk new wave America. If there's any problem with the book, it's the characters can sometimes sound precisely the same. They speak in grand, sweeping, hyperbolic bon mottes, which--while perhaps characteristic of aimless post-collegiate 20-somethings--don't always ring true. "You sound like a starlet, like Mamie Van Doren," says Art Bechstein to his girlfriend Phlox.
"I love Mamie Van Doren," Phlox said, slapping me lightly across the face. "I am a starlet."
OK, it's cute, but who talks this way? And the problem is, ALL the characters in "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" talk this way. Take this conversation between Arthur LeComte and Art Bechstein:
"Whew," I said. "That is one bizarre girl. What do they call her?"
"Mau Mau. Only that was when she was punk. I understand now that she's a Christian."
"I knew it had to be something. What will she be next?"
"Joan Crawford," he said.
The gangster father talks this way. The thug gang-banger talks this way. The gay future-diplomat talks this way. By the end of the book, it's difficult to distinguish one character from another, if you only had the dialogue on the page, and it's ultimately difficult to care about any of them when they stroll around the page speaking in multitudes about nothing.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Beginning
Review: This novel succeeds as a nice coming of age story and a great beginning of a wonderful career. The story is an excellent narration of present day society and one person's quest to try to find their place in it. Although in my opinion this is not the best Chabon novel, it shows the promise of a real talent and hints at what was to come. I think the reader who would like this work most is someone who recently graduated from college or younger. This is not a bad thing; rather it is the audience of a young author. Overall, I would recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Losing my Chabon virginity never felt so real.
Review: I've read some of the user reviews that suggest that a reader might want to start elsewhere when "getting into" Chabon.
Well, I'm here to tell you that this was my first, and I absolutely loved it. In fact, I read it faster and with more dedication than any other book of comparable length.
The characters were so alive, the descriptions of Pittsburgh so accurate, and the bouts with sexual identity so, well - I mean, not that I had any doubts about myself while reading this... But I could feel Art's confusion as if it were my own - which it wasn't, though.
I cried when I finished this book, partly because the one character with whom I felt closest fell into some bad fortune, and also because I didn't want it to end.
Look, if you like realistic, vivid, funny, and otherwise entertaining books, this one is one of the finest I've read in a while.
So what if you haven't read Kavalier and Klay? I haven't either - but that one's next.
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