SOURCE: “The Pleasure of His Company,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 9, 1991, pp. 3, 8.

In the following review, Tallent offers a positive assessment of A Model World.

Michael Chabon writes a prose so engaging—so rapid, graceful, allusive, and resourceful—that its reader can't help feeling flattered, singled out for brilliant attention, as when a witty friend brings every last ounce of vivacity to a conversation.

In the novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Chabon's first book, joi de vivre was half the story. The other half was a diligently plotted plot, variously enamored characters, a brooding gangster father and the young narrator's troubled decoding of his own sexuality. The novel included, as an anti-romantic element, the industrial swelter of summer Pittsburgh, yet it was romance, really, that carried the day.

It was a largely unclouded summer's day: The exhalations of factories never smelled toxic, fear of AIDS did...