Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Grady Tripp, a novelist and a writing professor at a liberal arts college, is working on his magnum opus novel (the manuscript is already 2600 pages long), but his efforts are hindered by the phenomenon that the more he writes, the less completed the novel gets. We follow Grady's riveting first-person narration of the events of just one long weekend during a writing festival/workshop. These events will end up pivotal in the lives of the main characters.

The first half of the novel is brilliantly plotted, quick, and utterly hilarious. The second half is a bit of a letdown; it feels markedly slower and less exciting. But it is only because the first half sets the bar so high and because it always takes more time to untie the tight, intricate knots of the plot than to tie them. And the author masterfully unravels all plot twists, and all's well that ends well, except for poor Doctor Dee.

As we follow the events of that extraordinary weekend, it is obvious that the author knows a lot about our human weaknesses: self-centeredness, pretentiousness, hypocrisy, various addictions, etc. The prose is wonderful: effortless, vivid, and humorous. Here's a sample:

"A handsome young family was crossing the street in front of us, a slender pair of blond parents in khaki and plaid surrounded by an orderly tangle of cute blond replicant children. Two of the children swung sparkling bags of goldfish. The sun lit the flyaway ends of their hair. Everyone was holding hands. They looked like an advertisment for a brand of mild laxative or the Seventh-Day Adventists. The mother carried a golden-haired baby in her arms and the father was actually smoking a briar pipe."

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