The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

**Chabon’s writing is deft and delicate — almost every page includes a delightful phrase or two. He mingles dialogue, the Pittsburgh cityscape, descriptions of the characters’ activity and Art’s thoughts and feelings to achieve that magical illusion good novels give — that the reader is living the character’s life with all its savors, jokes and pangs. —** Boston Herald The New York Times **bestseller debut that put Michael Chabon in the pantheon of great American novelists.** The enthralling debut from bestselling novelist Michael Chabon is a penetrating narrative of complex friendships, father-son conflicts, and the awakening of a young man’s sexual identity. Chabon masterfully renders the funny, tender, and captivating first-person narrative of Art Bechstein, whose confusion and heartache echo the tones of literary forebears like *The Catcher in the Rye* ’s Holden Caulfield and *The Great Gatsby* ’s Nick Carraway *. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh* incontrovertibly established Chabon as a powerful force in contemporary fiction, even before his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel *The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay *set the literary world spinning. An unforgettable story of coming of age in America, it is also an essential milestone in the movement of American fiction, from a novelist who has become one of the most important and enduring voices of this generation.