Saturday, January 10, 2015

A Book About My Hometown


This book by Michael Chabon has been on my TRB list for a while.  I finally found in on BookBub for 99 cents, but then, it just sat on my Nook waiting.  For the PopSugar book challenge, I needed to read a story about my hometown.  Finally, the time was right.
It's strange reading about all the places that I loved as a child and having them pictured perfectly in writing.  The way that Chabon describes the cloud factories describes perfectly what so many of the factories that sit off the three rivers look like.   No one is really sure what they do or make, but the clouds that come out of the stacks are perfect and white.  He talks about Shenley Park, Three Rivers, The Carnegie Mellon Museum of Natural History, Shadyside and so much more.  It was fun to read about the familiar.
There is one aspect of Pittsburgh that most people who are not from there are surprised about - it is actually a pretty big Mob town.  That aspect was definitely captured in this book.  It is definitely a coming of age novel - working through life and trying to figure out just exactly who you are.  It is extremely well written, even though some of it was difficult for various reasons to read. I described it to my mom as being reminiscent in some ways of Gatsby, and I will stick with that.  
I enjoyed it.  4/ 5 stars.

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