SOURCE: Burkhardt, Joanna M. Review of Werewolves in Their Youth, by Michael Chabon. Library Journal 124, no. 1 (January 1999): 161.

In the following review, Burkhardt lauds Werewolves in Their Youth for its remarkably crafted stories and skillful rendering of intricate emotional responses.

This collection of short stories [Werewolves in Their Youth] from novelist Chabon reveals the intricacies of emotion in the lives of everyday people. Chabon's central figures are beset by divorce: the pressures that cause it, the traumas that accompany it, and the aftershock and readjustment that follow. Whether children or adults, they struggle to manage in situations that are not always so manageable. From the fat boy trying to reunite his estranged parents to the husband helping his wife give birth to the child of a rapist, these remarkably crafted stories explore life at the lunar extreme that brings out the werewolf in the human condition. Yet Chabon magically...