SOURCE: “Exploring Our Inner Conflicts,” in Chicago Tribune Books, May 16, 1999, p. C3.

In the following review, Seaman offers a positive assessment of Werewolves in Their Youth.

The children in short stories and novels offer clues to the source of a writer's inspiration and sensibility. It is the trauma and triumphs of childhood, after all, that orient you to the human world. A persistent sense of alienation can foster keen observational skills, while love engenders empathy, and a volatile mix of these two precious qualities is essential to the mysterious process of writing fiction.

Michael Chabon possesses both in spades, as well as such intimacy with language that his psychologically acute metaphoric descriptions bloom in the mind with as much prismatic dazzle as the fireworks ignited by psychedelics. His fictional children are ardent and critical beings sparking with off-kilter wisdom and wit, edgy imaginations and precocious resiliency. Chabon writes...