Werewolves in Their Youth: Stories

If books had body temperature this collection would have been ice cold. Little warm bodies of children and adults are pitched against the inhumane chill of everyday life. No matter the age, characters in the book are often profoundly lonely and find themselves palpating the way out of the woods on a deeply foggy morning/afternoon/evening of their lives. Kids turning into werewolves, under the watchful and indifferent eye of adults - parents stupefied by their dysfunctional lives, schools simplemindedly punitive - cry out for help in their awkward ways and find that they have only each other to turn to. Couples, young and old, struggling through their marriages and divorces, the lucky ones finding consolation in realizing that there are no recipes for working it out (as in "House Hunting"). Adult-age people deeply confused about having or raising children ("Wolfman's Child" and "Green's Book"). Young people blaming their misfortunes on the adults in their lives and watching themselves become one of them ("The Harris Fetko Story"). Or sheer chill of being utterly alone ("Mrs. Box"). Our lives rarely come prepackaged with instructions for use, but more often with some sort of uncertainty. The main appeal of Michael Chabon the short story writer is his linguistic mastery of picturing this uncertainty and our incoherent attempts at resolving it. This artistry is akin to the skill of a master fine artist who beautifully depicts what he sees without passing judgement. Many of these stories do not offer any resolution, and even do not reach a climax. They are elegant sketches of other people's lives. Rich, precise and densely packed language makes you slow down and savor the book sentence by sentence, instead of gulping it. The characters are very much alive and colorful. Moving.

Michael Chabon is mostly known for his novels (Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay), but I think his short stories are little gems. The opening sentence of the title story alone is wonderful. His writing sparkles with characters, settings, detail, and vivid turns of phrase. The final story, a Gothic tale written in the style of an author-character in The Wonder Boys, was perfectly done. A perfect book to keep in the car or briefcase for reading while you wait--but you may not be able to stop reading when it's time to go!

I have to admit that the cover of this collection put me off a bit. I'm not usually attracted to Werewolves. But when I realized that the Werewolf in the title story wasn't a supernatural creature, but a child who felt like I did way back when -- isolated,friendless, lonely -- I couldn't help but buy the book. And I was overwhelmed, frankly. Chabon's snapshots of life's moments -- sometimes redemptive, often painful -- touched me in a way most contemporary fiction doesn't. There's a bit of Yates here, some Cheever, Alice Munro, even Lovecraft. And there is something entirely Chabon about it. I couldn't help but laugh at the "reviewers" whose main complaint was that they had to use a dictionary every once in a while. What a great pleasure that was for me -- to discover a word or two that I'd never read before. Isn't that the beauty of the English language? That it contains these mysteries and gifts of little used but fabulous words? How lucky we are to have a writer able to send us tripping through the Oxford English Dictionary while keeping us absolutely grounded in the contemporary American experience.

In each of these nine stories, Chabon--particularly noted for his stylistic accomplishments--manages to flesh out a variety of characters in only a few pages, and sometimes in a few words. His sentences frequently seem to reach perfection, each word fitting precisely with a satisfying snap like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle, without the disappointing sting of over-cleverness. As I read each wholly original story, I couldn't help but respond frequently with a knowing smile and the warm realization of recognition. I've smelled that smell and heard that sound ("There was a stink of chlorine from the waterfall in the atrium where the chimes of the elevators echoed all night with a sound like a dental instrument hitting a cold tile floor"). I've seen that place, even though I've never been there ("Plunkettsburg was at first glance unprepossessing--a low, rusting little city, with tarnished onion domes and huddled houses, drab as an armful of dead leaves strewn along the ground"). I've felt that feeling ("The next day I lay in bed, aching, sore, and suffering from that peculiar brand of spiritual depression born largely of suppressed fear"). And I most assuredly know that person ("Oriole was a big, broad-backed woman, ample and plain and quadrangular as the state of Iowa itself. Hugging her, Eddie felt comforted, as by the charitable gaze of a cow"). Each page proffers several such stylistic gems, which serve to draw you into the story without putting you off with their brilliance. Chabon has the ability to hook our heart by ripping the skin off some of the more devastating aspects of contemporary dysfunctional life--divorce, rape, alcoholism, mental illness--while giving us permission, even encouraging us, to laugh at the absurd behavior of these human beings who remind us so much of ourselves. These stories are bitingly funny because we know them, we've been there, or we've imagined them ourselves. They are fresh and original, and yet they resonate with familiarity. Perhaps you had to have been a boy once to fully appreciate the haunting title story. Poignant and powerful, it prodded many of my own boyhood memories, stirring up emotional coals that still smolder in this 44-year-old body. "Werewolves in Their Youth" captures at once the magical imagination of youth--playing super-hero, android, or werewolf--and the harrowing, confusing reality that insists on breaking in when those childish fantasies go too far. It reads like a mature, modern Ray Bradbury, yet with a more satisfying and non-artificial ending. In fact, the endings of all these tales transmit a note of surprise, but without disingenuousness. Here are ordinary people in ordinary situations--a graduation party, a bris, a night at a ramshackle island bar--who are revealed as twisted and awry because of their inner fear, violent anger, or confusion. Yet these are stories that repeatedly strike a chord because, after all, there's a little of the w

I don't usually enjoy short stories, so it was with some trepidation that I purchased this book. It wildly exceeded my expectations. What a writer this man is. I thought the comment in the Washington Post about Chabon being the "Star of American Letters" might have been over the top, and then I read these stories. He is, in every way, a star. Luminous. Brilliant.