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    A Model World: And Other Stories
    Unavailable
    A Model World: And Other Stories
    Unavailable
    A Model World: And Other Stories
    Ebook188 pages3 hours

    A Model World: And Other Stories

    By Michael Chabon

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A story collection from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, “one of his generation’s most eloquent new voices” (The New York Times).

    With his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon announced his presence as a literary wunderkind of style and substance. A Model World and Other Stories only burnished his reputation as a distinctive prose stylist.
     
    In eleven elegant tales—some of them linked—by the New York Times–bestselling author of Telegraph Avenue and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Chabon’s singular characters hold tight to private dreams even as their closest relationships crumble. Five stories follow an anxious adolescent from the beach vacation where he learns of his parents’ divorce to the confused days of a woefully misguided crush. Others find ex-lovers tormenting each other at an oceanside café, a washed-up professional baseball player attending a teammate’s funeral, and a Pittsburgh disc jockey still pining for a woman who married him to get her American citizenship.
     
    “Chabon moves across powerful emotional ground with certainty and delicacy,” raves the Chicago Tribune. “There are heartbreaking moments in these stories, but they are rendered so precisely, through incidents that capture the subtlest of feelings, that the reader can only smile at Chabon’s skill.”  This ebook features a biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateDec 20, 2011
    ISBN9781453234112
    Unavailable
    A Model World: And Other Stories
    Author

    Michael Chabon

    Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of seven novels – including The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union – two collections of short stories, and one other work of non-fiction. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and children.

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    Reviews for A Model World

    3.5/5

    210 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Great stories, collection with two different parts. The first part present indepent stories, told with a lot of humor and wit. The second part is a series around the boy Nathan, living through puberty and the divorce of his parents and has a more melancholical tone, without becoming melodramatic. Both parts worthwhile reading.
    • 4/5
      Pleasant collection extremely anchored in a particular time, place, class, social circle. Write what you know! Chabon as ever has the deftly-observed character and the piercing turn of phrase.
    • 3/5
      Like most short story collections, a mixed bag--although Chabon certainly can write well. The best stories are in the second half of the book, which consist of vignettes from the childhood through the mid-adolescence of a lad named Nathan Shapiro
    • 4/5
      A very good writer, but only the final part (where the stories were linked) allowed his characterisation to really come through.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed these stories and felt the endings were especially strong.
    • 5/5
      A collection of seven short stories concluding with a one longer story mostly centred on younger people. They include a story about a student about to plagiarise, with his friend's knowledge, an existing published work to submit as his own thesis, and two close friend who share everything except their girlfriends, that is until when one is dumped by his girl. The final story follows Nathan Shapiro from the age of ten, just before his parents divorce, to the age of sixteen and his burgeoning adolescence and sexual awareness, a story that truly touches the heart What is evident in each of these stories is Chabon's ability, with minimal physical description, to create fully fledged characters one can empathise with. Moreover, from the very first lines one is aware that Miachael Cahbon is no ordinary writer, his command of language and and the written word results in prose of supreme and unpretentious eloquence, stories full of compassion, it is simple a joy to read.
    • 3/5
      A Model World marks Michael Chabon's first work. Whilst this collection of short stories lacks the strength of his best novels, and his later collection, Werewolves in Their Youth, there are nonetheless a few treasures glinting in there for the discerning reader.These stories are all concerned with loss or missed expectations, typically based around young men. As a beginning writer, Chabon understood that the easiest way to gather an emotional punch in a short story is through an elegiac, melancholy tone. This does lead to him dodging the rigorous narrative requirements of a truly excellent short story (demands well and truly met in his subsequent collection). Nonetheless, Chabon - even in his twenties - was an excellent writer, and this collection demonstrates that. Beautiful prose combines the best aspects of brevity and lyricism, married to a true gift for off-the-cuff characterisation. Chabon peppers his characters with incidental biographical detail that is both fascinating and utterly believable. These stories of young men on the precipice of irrevocably growing up remind me nothing so much of young F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories, with all their strengths and weaknesses. I don't think A Model World is a good introduction for readers new to Chabon - its offerings are too slight to win any converts. However, Chabon is one of America's best writers, and it's still worthwhile read, especially for fans.The book stands quietly in the corner on it own merits, but there is an added bonus in seeing the young writer that would grow - irrevocably - old with such panache.
    • 3/5
      Great writers do not always have a lot to say. The stories in this collection are mostly somewhat pointless, but as such they are still well written.
    • 3/5
      I've mentioned before that Michael Chabon is a writer I greatly respect, not just for penning one of my favourite novels of all time (Kavalier & Clay), but also for being a literary heavyweight determined to restore the good name of genre fiction: someone decrying "the contemporary, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story." I fucking hate those stories."A Model World" is a collection of precisely those kinds of stories, drawn from the very early years of Chabon's career, before he was... cleansed. They are, of course, brimming with beautiful prose and perfect turns of phrase, because he is Michael Chabon. Yet they're also pointless. Forgettable. Unremarkable. They may inspire emotions, but like emotions themselves, they quickly fade away. They are, to use another of his quotes I delight in, "sparkling with epiphanic dew." Which evaporates.If you're going to read that kind of story you could probably do worse, mind you. There are a couple of good ones in here. The final five all follow the same character, Nathan Shapiro, through a predictable bildungsroman; sort of like Hemingway's Nick Adams but with less manliness and more existential melancholy (or did Nick do that a lot too?) It's quite banal, but because it's done by Chabon it's not a complete waste of your time. Sort of like how Shutter Island was a typical psychological thriller, but much better than usual because it was directed by Martin Scorsese. Except Shutter Island was much better than "A Model World," but you get what I mean.In any case, I only have to muck about in the fetid slop of Chabon's early career long enough to read "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" and "Werewolves In Their Youth." Then it's rocketing back into his awesome post-2000 work, with epic World War II adventures and Sherlock Holmes and alternate dimension homicide detectives and all that jazz. That's gonna be awesome. Having said that, Mike, I GET THAT YOU ARE JEWISH! I REALLY, REALLY DO! NOW WILL YOU PLEASE STOP WRITING ABOUT IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN!
    • 3/5
      A short story collection; the first six are standalones, building on themes of adolescence, relationships, ethics and disillusionment, whilst the final five focus on the elder son of a family on the brink, and then in the process, of divorce and examine his feelings and its effect on him. Awkwardness and discomfort are among the main themes. A lot like life, then.
    • 4/5
      Someday I’m going to write a treatise on short stories of today – that is, the current fiction that everyone thinks are great and wonderful. I am hoping that, in that way, I will have a better understanding of what I’m missing, because I must be missing something. This collection may be the perfect place to start. Chabon is good. He proved his story-telling and writing abilities in Kavalier and Clay and (even though it didn’t resonate that well with me) he showed excellence in craft with The Final Solution. And in this collection, each of these stories kept my attention – the writing and skill were there. But far too often I left wondering, “Yeah, but so what?” Someday I’m going to investigate these stories and analyze the plot, climaxes, etc. I can see the characterization, but isn’t there supposed to be more?All of this makes me sound particularly down on this collection, and I am not. As I indicated, I cared. The stories kept me reading. I just didn’t always get the pay-off I expected. (Again I warn, maybe I’m expecting something far too pedestrian and I just need to learn to drink Pinot instead of Boone’s Farm.) In particular, the second half paid off more because the six stories were a connected narrative – almost feeling autobiographical. But then, as I look back through, and remember how much I enjoyed reading “Blumenthal on the Air” and “Smoke” and, actually, all the others, I know there is more here – more that I need to explore.So, maybe I don’t need to write that treatise – maybe that is the answer. Maybe I feel the change that has occurred without recognizing it. And, to me, that is really what story is about. It is about process. Something comes in, it is changed (the process) and something different comes out. The subjects of the stories are different when they leave, and I am different after I read about them. I left this collection changed because of what I read, and that may be all that is important.(Okay, I never do this. I write my review, post it, then read other reviews. But, no matter what I see, my review stands. However, the other review posted for this book reminded me of something in this collection. “Ocean Avenue” begins with one of the best lines I’ve ever read. “If you can still see how you could once have loved a person, you are still in love; an extinct love is always wholly incredible.” That line alone makes this collection worth it.)
    • 5/5
      An enticing and great collection of contemporary short stories. Nearly ever single one of them has something to offer. Highly recommended.