SOURCE: “Panic in Pittsburgh,” in New Statesman and Society, June 9, 1995, p. 38.

In the following review, Kaveney offers a positive assessment of Wonder Boys.

When a much-praised young writer turns to writing about writing, the patter of diminishing returns usually approaches. However, in Michael Chabon's excellent second novel [Wonder Boys], a novelist's rapid tumble towards disaster comes to seem no more than a special case of the rule, no less general for being the determinant of Aristotelian tragedy: that chickens have to come home to roost.

In three tragi-comic days, Grady Tripp loses almost everything—his marriage, his car, his job, his best friend, the adoration of his favourite students and the novel on which he has been working for seven years. He almost loses his life and his lover as well, but his author is merciful and Grady gets pulled back, literally, from the brink. As he lurches...