Chris's review

[close]

blog this review

Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16707.Wonder_Boys?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Wonder Boys" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1166740697m/16707.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16707.Wonder_Boys?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Wonder Boys</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2715.Michael_Chabon">Michael Chabon</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5187773?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 3 of 5 stars<br/>While I liked <i>Wonder Boys</i>, I was not as utterly engrossed in it as I was with <i>Cavalier and Clay</i> and <i>The Yiddish Policeman's Union</i>. While Chabon strikes his usual perfect balance between descriptive and straight-forward prose and fills the book with believably improbable characters, the general premise of the book was less interesting to me than the other two novels of his I've read. While I am a great fan of the unlikable narrator, Grady is the sort of protagonist I have a hard time taking an interest in - a miserable middle-aged white author who smokes two much pot, is a constant disappointment to himself and everyone around him, and who is in the midst of destroying his third marriage and possibly his current mistress. I liked the story itself and the book was fun to read, but Grady's guilt-ridden self-indulgence and cowardice kept me a bit distanced in a way I wasn't when reading C&C or YPU. If you like anything else by Chabon, however, I do recommend it, as he is such a fantastic writer that "not quite as good as his others" still denotes a very good novel. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/36341?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>