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Await Your Reply
The lives of three strangers interconnect in unforeseen ways and with unexpected consequences in acclaimed author Dan Chaon's gripping, brilliantly written new novel.
Longing to get on with his life, Miles Cheshire nevertheless can't stop searching for his troubled twin brother, Hayden, who has been missing for ten years. Hayden has covered his tracks skillfully, moving stealthily from place to place, managing along the way to hold down various jobs and seem, to the people he meets, entirely normal. But some version of the truth is always concealed.
A few days after graduating from high school, Lucy Lattimore sneaks away from the small town of Pompey, Ohio, with her charismatic former history teacher. They arrive in Nebraska, in the middle of nowhere, at a long-deserted motel next to a dried-up reservoir, to figure out the next move on their path to a new life. But soon Lucy begins to feel quietly uneasy.
My whole life is a lie, thinks Ryan Schuyler, who has recently learned some shocking news. In response, he walks off the Northwestern University campus, hops on a bus, and breaks loose from his existence, which suddenly seems abstract and tenuous. Presumed dead, Ryan decides to remake himself through unconventional and precarious means.
Await Your Reply is a literary masterwork with the momentum of a thriller, an unforgettable novel in which pasts are invented and reinvented and the future is both seductively uncharted and perilously unmoored.
(jacket)
Longing to get on with his life, Miles Cheshire nevertheless can't stop searching for his troubled twin brother, Hayden, who has been missing for ten years. Hayden has covered his tracks skillfully, moving stealthily from place to place, managing along the way to hold down various jobs and seem, to the people he meets, entirely normal. But some version of the truth is always concealed.
A few days after graduating from high school, Lucy Lattimore sneaks away from the small town of Pompey, Ohio, with her charismatic former history teacher. They arrive in Nebraska, in the middle of nowhere, at a long-deserted motel next to a dried-up reservoir, to figure out the next move on their path to a new life. But soon Lucy begins to feel quietly uneasy.
My whole life is a lie, thinks Ryan Schuyler, who has recently learned some shocking news. In response, he walks off the Northwestern University campus, hops on a bus, and breaks loose from his existence, which suddenly seems abstract and tenuous. Presumed dead, Ryan decides to remake himself through unconventional and precarious means.
Await Your Reply is a literary masterwork with the momentum of a thriller, an unforgettable novel in which pasts are invented and reinvented and the future is both seductively uncharted and perilously unmoored.
(jacket)
324 pages, Hardcover
First published August 25, 2009
721 people are currently reading
12324 people want to read
About the author
Dan Chaon
45 books1,464 followersDan Chaon is the author of Among the Missing, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and You Remind Me of Me, which was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, and Entertainment Weekly, among other publications. Chaon’s fiction has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction, and he was the recipient of the 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Chaon lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and teaches at Oberlin College, where he is the Pauline M. Delaney Professor of Creative Writing. His new novel, Await Your Reply, will be published in late August 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,472 reviews
July 23, 2020
Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply is literary fiction/psychological mystery with identity theft, missing persons and internet scam all rolled into one. A major theme is the enduring discussion of what subsumes the identity of 'self'. I am mindful that to say too much about the plot would constitute a spoiler.
The bare bones of the story are: Miles is on a seemingly never-ending search for his genious but schizophrenic identical twin, Lucy has just abandoned her real life and is about to embark on another and Ryan has just discovered his whole life has been built on a lie. The novel is punctuated into chapters which deal with each of these characters; it carefully metes out suspense wherein these lives will intersect thus providing the compulsion to see what proves to be a truly unsettling finale.
Chaon is a masterful writer; his prose is even, refined and never heavy-handed. This novel is a disturbing, intriguing and compelling read; if it is indication of Dan Chaon's talent, then I definitely want to read more. 4 ★.
The bare bones of the story are: Miles is on a seemingly never-ending search for his genious but schizophrenic identical twin, Lucy has just abandoned her real life and is about to embark on another and Ryan has just discovered his whole life has been built on a lie. The novel is punctuated into chapters which deal with each of these characters; it carefully metes out suspense wherein these lives will intersect thus providing the compulsion to see what proves to be a truly unsettling finale.
Chaon is a masterful writer; his prose is even, refined and never heavy-handed. This novel is a disturbing, intriguing and compelling read; if it is indication of Dan Chaon's talent, then I definitely want to read more. 4 ★.
February 24, 2016
These were characters you could really sink your teeth into, and for some reason most of them reminded me of my estranged uncle. I loved the prose, the road trips and the mystery that surrounded this book. Each chapter will leave you wishing for more, but you will have to wait. Read this book before they make it into a movie and ruin it.
September 7, 2009
This book was a bit of a disappointment.
It came highly recommended from a number of sources and was described as a face-paced thriller of psychological suspence.
???
It does start off with a thriller-esque vibe as one character is rushed to the hospital, his severed hand on ice. From there it turns swiftly into a fine example of a MFA thesis project-cum-blog, with much meandering pondering on the meaning(less) of life, the lack of direction in the Generation Y population, the uselessness of college and the pros and cons of identity theft.
Reading this book was a lot like sitting next to a stoned grad student at a coffee house while waiting for an Alanis Morrisette cover artist to take the stage.
The only forward momentum of the story came from wanting to know how the disparate characters come together in the denouement. Unfortunately as a long-time thriller reader I was able to see the answer through the literary mechanics so the middle third of the book was mostly an exercise in tedium as I felt the author trying to monkey with the audience and create a false tension.
I'm honestly very glad this book appeals to so many people because it seems like a personal tale for the author and judging from the endnotes was the product of a very difficult and emotional time for him. I want the book to be a success so that he can have a sense of good come out of that hard time. I just can't honestly recommend this book as a good thriller or suspense novel.
It came highly recommended from a number of sources and was described as a face-paced thriller of psychological suspence.
???
It does start off with a thriller-esque vibe as one character is rushed to the hospital, his severed hand on ice. From there it turns swiftly into a fine example of a MFA thesis project-cum-blog, with much meandering pondering on the meaning(less) of life, the lack of direction in the Generation Y population, the uselessness of college and the pros and cons of identity theft.
Reading this book was a lot like sitting next to a stoned grad student at a coffee house while waiting for an Alanis Morrisette cover artist to take the stage.
The only forward momentum of the story came from wanting to know how the disparate characters come together in the denouement. Unfortunately as a long-time thriller reader I was able to see the answer through the literary mechanics so the middle third of the book was mostly an exercise in tedium as I felt the author trying to monkey with the audience and create a false tension.
I'm honestly very glad this book appeals to so many people because it seems like a personal tale for the author and judging from the endnotes was the product of a very difficult and emotional time for him. I want the book to be a success so that he can have a sense of good come out of that hard time. I just can't honestly recommend this book as a good thriller or suspense novel.
June 7, 2012
Are writers as a breed more inclined than most to think about identity? It seems like they would be. They’re always trying to get inside characters’ heads. In the case of this particular author add the fact that he grew up as an orphan and maybe it makes sense he’s so good at depicting the mutability of self. In the three different storylines the key figures show both the ability and proclivity to change. It quickly becomes apparent (and thus does not qualify as a spoiler to mention) that identity theft is the main theme. Part of the process is reinventing a new person and another part is dispensing with the old one. Both offer drama.
One of the more interesting, though not altogether convincing, elements of the book was the stark contrast between identical twin brothers. It didn’t seem plausible that one could be so conventionally nice and easily led while the other was so wickedly smart and potentially unbalanced. The differences made for plenty of conflict, though, which we all know from Writing 101 is a good thing.
I won’t say anything about the three separate plots or how they tie together, but I will say that it was cleverly done. The writing was excellent throughout. I liked it well enough that I’ll probably try another Dan Chaon book some day, that is, assuming this wasn’t some one-off under a nom de plume.
One of the more interesting, though not altogether convincing, elements of the book was the stark contrast between identical twin brothers. It didn’t seem plausible that one could be so conventionally nice and easily led while the other was so wickedly smart and potentially unbalanced. The differences made for plenty of conflict, though, which we all know from Writing 101 is a good thing.
I won’t say anything about the three separate plots or how they tie together, but I will say that it was cleverly done. The writing was excellent throughout. I liked it well enough that I’ll probably try another Dan Chaon book some day, that is, assuming this wasn’t some one-off under a nom de plume.
June 11, 2015
This is a book that begs the question 'Who would you be if you weren't who you are?' We're talking mass quantities of identity theft here, folks. Reinventing oneself has never been easier with the advent of the internet.
Fine writing, taut pacing, and questionable characters make for a good story. Ah, 'the grotesque performance of privilege.' Just throwing that last in there because it was so tasty to read.
Fine writing, taut pacing, and questionable characters make for a good story. Ah, 'the grotesque performance of privilege.' Just throwing that last in there because it was so tasty to read.
December 10, 2023
The characters in Dan Chaon's novel "Await Your Reply" are all dealing with identity issues. Some of them have been forced to change their identity, some willingly change their identity, and others have no identity unless its in relationship to another person.
"Await Your Reply" has all the elements of a noir thriller: characters with shady pasts, long cons, femmes fatale, mafia hit men, amateur detectives. It has several mysteries working at once, although at the outset, the reader intuitively knows that there is only one mystery at the heart of the novel that will connect all of them. There is, of course, the plot twist at the denouement---one that clever readers may have already guessed at long before but is still somewhat jarring.
Still, even with all the elements of a noir thriller, Chaon's novel isn't the flash-bang type of thriller. This is not the Lee Child or Michael Connelly type of thriller, with exciting shoot-outs, car chases, steamy bedroom scenes, or even somewhat tidy endings. There is not a lot of action in Chaon's novel. There is some suspense, but it is more psychological and cerebral than physical. Arguably, there isn't a whole hell of a lot of closure in the end. None of these are, in any way, negatives, by the way. Chaon isn't going for a traditional noir thriller, so his overturning of our expectations is par for the course.
There are essentially three stories in "Await Your Reply". In one, a young boy named Ryan is on the lam with his father, a small-time hustler who is trying to educate his son on the art of the long con. In another, a teenager named Lucy has run away from home with her high school history teacher, Mr. Orson. In the third story, a man named Miles searches the country for his long-lost twin brother, Hayden. The stories alternate evenly between the three. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear how the stories are inter-connected and how the lives of the characters are intertwined, but it is never entirely clear as to what is actually happening until the very end.
Of course, even the end leaves more questions than it answers, but Chaon isn't setting out to answer all the questions. Human behavior and motivations are too messy and complicated to figure out. Sometimes, we all do and say things for reasons that are unclear even to ourselves. In the end, a police report or a detective's findings may figure out the who, what, and how, but the why is oftentimes forever a mystery.
"Await Your Reply" has all the elements of a noir thriller: characters with shady pasts, long cons, femmes fatale, mafia hit men, amateur detectives. It has several mysteries working at once, although at the outset, the reader intuitively knows that there is only one mystery at the heart of the novel that will connect all of them. There is, of course, the plot twist at the denouement---one that clever readers may have already guessed at long before but is still somewhat jarring.
Still, even with all the elements of a noir thriller, Chaon's novel isn't the flash-bang type of thriller. This is not the Lee Child or Michael Connelly type of thriller, with exciting shoot-outs, car chases, steamy bedroom scenes, or even somewhat tidy endings. There is not a lot of action in Chaon's novel. There is some suspense, but it is more psychological and cerebral than physical. Arguably, there isn't a whole hell of a lot of closure in the end. None of these are, in any way, negatives, by the way. Chaon isn't going for a traditional noir thriller, so his overturning of our expectations is par for the course.
There are essentially three stories in "Await Your Reply". In one, a young boy named Ryan is on the lam with his father, a small-time hustler who is trying to educate his son on the art of the long con. In another, a teenager named Lucy has run away from home with her high school history teacher, Mr. Orson. In the third story, a man named Miles searches the country for his long-lost twin brother, Hayden. The stories alternate evenly between the three. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear how the stories are inter-connected and how the lives of the characters are intertwined, but it is never entirely clear as to what is actually happening until the very end.
Of course, even the end leaves more questions than it answers, but Chaon isn't setting out to answer all the questions. Human behavior and motivations are too messy and complicated to figure out. Sometimes, we all do and say things for reasons that are unclear even to ourselves. In the end, a police report or a detective's findings may figure out the who, what, and how, but the why is oftentimes forever a mystery.
October 24, 2010
Dan Chaon's novel was reviewed and touted as being a "book for our age", giving us the quintessential text on "identity in the 21st century" and so on and so forth. The theme of the book intrigued me- identity theft in an age of exponentially boosting computer bureaucracy and the separation from the tangible personhood. Or at least that is what I thought the theme would be.
It turned out to be nothing so thrilling or philosophical as that, opting instead to take the low road and use the premise in a very literal manner. No metaphysical turmoil and no existential conundrums to be found within these pages that isn't expressly laid out for the reader in very literal terms. He doesn't allow us to come to our own conclusions or lead us to his, but instead spoon feeds us up until his Sixth Sense styled ending where we are supposed to gasp and be shocked.
I wasn't impressed with the author's style, finding it vague and often ambivalent to it's own self, offhand and slight as if it were completely disinterested in the telling of the story. And that came through in spades because it made me feel disinterested.
The book is filled with flat, two-dimensional characters, suffering from a severe lack of characterization. Instead of utilizing character actions to give us a sense of self and identity, we are subjected to all sorts of impertinent and unnecessary back stories (however a person can be defined by their pasts, but Chaon uses these stories more as filler in an already thin novel, and it is a stretch to see how these interludes in any way affect the story he is trying to tell). In a story about identity, shouldn't the characters identities and characteristics be the strongest points of the novel? Not here. Not in this book. Instead, Chaon sees himself as a clever master of plot, giving us weak characters in order to drive the story home. And instead of a thrill-ride as some called it we got a lazy Sunday drive to the church social. The book is thin- in it's plot, it's theme and it's characters- a literary anorexic.
Added:
I would rather not dwell on what would make re book better, but talk about it's theme (which it didn't convey at all in any real sense). However, I am a little too tired to write about it in any real way at the moment.
It turned out to be nothing so thrilling or philosophical as that, opting instead to take the low road and use the premise in a very literal manner. No metaphysical turmoil and no existential conundrums to be found within these pages that isn't expressly laid out for the reader in very literal terms. He doesn't allow us to come to our own conclusions or lead us to his, but instead spoon feeds us up until his Sixth Sense styled ending where we are supposed to gasp and be shocked.
I wasn't impressed with the author's style, finding it vague and often ambivalent to it's own self, offhand and slight as if it were completely disinterested in the telling of the story. And that came through in spades because it made me feel disinterested.
The book is filled with flat, two-dimensional characters, suffering from a severe lack of characterization. Instead of utilizing character actions to give us a sense of self and identity, we are subjected to all sorts of impertinent and unnecessary back stories (however a person can be defined by their pasts, but Chaon uses these stories more as filler in an already thin novel, and it is a stretch to see how these interludes in any way affect the story he is trying to tell). In a story about identity, shouldn't the characters identities and characteristics be the strongest points of the novel? Not here. Not in this book. Instead, Chaon sees himself as a clever master of plot, giving us weak characters in order to drive the story home. And instead of a thrill-ride as some called it we got a lazy Sunday drive to the church social. The book is thin- in it's plot, it's theme and it's characters- a literary anorexic.
Added:
I would rather not dwell on what would make re book better, but talk about it's theme (which it didn't convey at all in any real sense). However, I am a little too tired to write about it in any real way at the moment.
April 30, 2025
Dan Chaon creates a sense of dread like no other in the context of human dynamics. This one follows three different threads of odd couples (a teacher and his female student; a boy with his birth father; twins who are nothing alike) that eventually converge. And it begins with a severed hand.
Is it a thriller? I’m no genre expert, but it is literary. It’s not as good as You Remind Me of Me (that was a really good book), which felt like putting an exciting puzzle together. After a strong start here, it wobbled a bit, and there were some writing moments that made me cringe in a bad way, like when two of the three black guys in the book both said, “MmmHmm. MmmHmm.” But it found its footing again to a satisfying end, was surprising and enjoyable, and I felt in capable hands.
The interview with Chaon (pronounced Shawn) at the end was as good as the novel, and it validated my previous experience of building a jigsaw puzzle, since that’s his approach. I found it interesting, too, that this wasn’t mapped out, that he found the story and its connections through the act of writing it: this probably made it both wobble and yet surprise with a strong end.
Chaon captures the longing for another life in these middle-class characters from the mid-US. In fact, the whole thing is about the flimsiness of identity and asks big questions about who we are inside. As one who was fascinated by the art of acting as a girl, who felt how easy it was to become someone else on the outside and elicit different responses while always maintaining this unexplainable solidity of self, this spoke to me. During my first weeks in college living in a girl’s suite on a guy’s hall, the guys thought I was three different people at first. I’ll never forget that.
————————
Here’s some of the dread in the quotes below:
“Surely it was natural that his voice would become more casual, as he was no longer a teacher, no longer performing in front of a class. And it was natural that a person would turn out to be a little different when you really got to know them. No one was exactly what you thought they would be.”
“Driving downtown for the first time, he had an apocalyptic feeling, a last-man-on-earth feeling, even though other cars were driving a few blocks ahead, even though he saw a dark figure disappearing into the doorway of a ramshackle tavern.”
“It was coming on dusk when they pulled into the motel. The Lighthouse Motel, it said, but the neon wasn’t lit, and it looked abandoned.
‘Home at last!’ Mike Hayden said, and he moved the gear stick into park with a flourish.”
“No. He wouldn’t abandon her, he wouldn’t really abandon her, not after all this, all the distance they had come together.
She was aware of the elevator beginning to rise, and it was as if the gravity were lifting up out of her body like a spirit, it was as if she could open up like a milkweed pod, a hundred floating seeds spilling out of her, floating off, irretrievable.”
Is it a thriller? I’m no genre expert, but it is literary. It’s not as good as You Remind Me of Me (that was a really good book), which felt like putting an exciting puzzle together. After a strong start here, it wobbled a bit, and there were some writing moments that made me cringe in a bad way, like when two of the three black guys in the book both said, “MmmHmm. MmmHmm.” But it found its footing again to a satisfying end, was surprising and enjoyable, and I felt in capable hands.
The interview with Chaon (pronounced Shawn) at the end was as good as the novel, and it validated my previous experience of building a jigsaw puzzle, since that’s his approach. I found it interesting, too, that this wasn’t mapped out, that he found the story and its connections through the act of writing it: this probably made it both wobble and yet surprise with a strong end.
Chaon captures the longing for another life in these middle-class characters from the mid-US. In fact, the whole thing is about the flimsiness of identity and asks big questions about who we are inside. As one who was fascinated by the art of acting as a girl, who felt how easy it was to become someone else on the outside and elicit different responses while always maintaining this unexplainable solidity of self, this spoke to me. During my first weeks in college living in a girl’s suite on a guy’s hall, the guys thought I was three different people at first. I’ll never forget that.
————————
Here’s some of the dread in the quotes below:
“Surely it was natural that his voice would become more casual, as he was no longer a teacher, no longer performing in front of a class. And it was natural that a person would turn out to be a little different when you really got to know them. No one was exactly what you thought they would be.”
“Driving downtown for the first time, he had an apocalyptic feeling, a last-man-on-earth feeling, even though other cars were driving a few blocks ahead, even though he saw a dark figure disappearing into the doorway of a ramshackle tavern.”
“It was coming on dusk when they pulled into the motel. The Lighthouse Motel, it said, but the neon wasn’t lit, and it looked abandoned.
‘Home at last!’ Mike Hayden said, and he moved the gear stick into park with a flourish.”
“No. He wouldn’t abandon her, he wouldn’t really abandon her, not after all this, all the distance they had come together.
She was aware of the elevator beginning to rise, and it was as if the gravity were lifting up out of her body like a spirit, it was as if she could open up like a milkweed pod, a hundred floating seeds spilling out of her, floating off, irretrievable.”
February 12, 2019
This novel was 4.5 stars for me. It did make me a little paranoid now about identity theft. Still, I enjoyed how the (supposedly) unrelated stories connected in the end. I plan to read his other book soon.
May 8, 2010
This is an odd book. It's well written, interesting, and the characters are very well drawn. But it's confusing and has the worst ending of any book I think I have ever read.
It is mostly concerned with identity theft. Most of the characters are involved with various scams to empty people bank accounts. There are some Russians who come into it (no explanation what that's all about).
The main villain is the schizophrenic twin brother of one of the main characters who has spent his life trying to track him down. The villain twin switches identities at the drop of a hat - in fact through most of the story you have no idea that he's one of the main characters who has assumed the identity of one of the more sympathetic characters.
If this review seems confused, it's because the book is confused. What ever happened to telling a straight story - this this this and then that happened and that resulted in.... Evidently the trend is to confuse the reader so completely her has no idea what he's reading. But not every author is John Fowels or every book the Magus.
Maybe this was only part one of the book and he'll come back and tell us what the Russians had to do with it and what happened to Rachel and how Lucy got out of Africa.....
Although I doubt if I'll read anything by him again. You only get one chance.
It is mostly concerned with identity theft. Most of the characters are involved with various scams to empty people bank accounts. There are some Russians who come into it (no explanation what that's all about).
The main villain is the schizophrenic twin brother of one of the main characters who has spent his life trying to track him down. The villain twin switches identities at the drop of a hat - in fact through most of the story you have no idea that he's one of the main characters who has assumed the identity of one of the more sympathetic characters.
If this review seems confused, it's because the book is confused. What ever happened to telling a straight story - this this this and then that happened and that resulted in.... Evidently the trend is to confuse the reader so completely her has no idea what he's reading. But not every author is John Fowels or every book the Magus.
Maybe this was only part one of the book and he'll come back and tell us what the Russians had to do with it and what happened to Rachel and how Lucy got out of Africa.....
Although I doubt if I'll read anything by him again. You only get one chance.
October 21, 2019
Await Your Reply had been on my TBR since 2009. When I tried it, I decided to keep reading. It has the feeling of his more recent book, Ill Will, in the sense that you know something is going on that you don't know yet but not what it is. The characters seem to be searching for missing people in their lives, definitely a theme of identity, created and stolen.
July 22, 2025
MY FAVORITE BOOK. The ultimate novel on individual identity and creating one's own reality. I find that I can relate to this story :-) Every time I read this book, I pick up more details. Rich, layered and interconnected. Await Your Reply introduces intriguing money-motivated characters in a novel where names are especially significant. Read 22 times so far!
Contains a fun reference to Bate's Motel (Psycho) among many other things.
Related Works: Bleak House, The Secret Garden, The Return of the King, Origin, Upgrade, Sleepwalk, Ill Will, You Remind Me of Me, Stay Awake, Among the Missing, Fitting Ends, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Night Sister, Marjorie Morningstar, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text
"I myself, from the very beginning,
Seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium
Or a reflection in someone else's mirror,
Without flesh, without meaning, without a name.
Already I knew the list of crimes
That I was destined to commit."
- ANNA AKHMATOVA,
"Northern Elegies" (as quoted in Await Your Reply)
---------------------------------------------------
"First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do."
-EPICTETUS (as quoted in Await Your Reply)
---------------------------------------------------
Pirates, Magicians, Hypnotists - this is exactly my kind of book :-) I can not get enough of this.
From page one:
My favorite passage in the book (I love this stuff :-):
In the Acknowledgements, the author writes:
This book pays homage, and owes a great deal, to many fantastic and better writers who inspired me, both in childhood and beyond, including Robert Arthur, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury,Daphne du Maurier, John Fowles, Patrica Highsmith, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, Ira Levin, C.S. Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft, Vladimir Nabokov, Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Peter Straub, J.R.R. Tolkien, Thomas Tyron, and a number of others. One of the fun things about writing this book was making gestures and winks toward these writers that I've adored, I hope that they - living and dead - will forgive my incursions.
Other Favorite Passages:
"Above the wrist? Or below the wrist?"
_______
Their mother used to call them Hayden's "imaginary characters."
"Oh, Hayden," she would say, with exasperation. "Why can't you make up stories about happy people? Why does everything have to be so morbid?"
_______
When their father died, Hayden began to see connections in every face. Where had he come across that one before? In what life? No doubt nearly every soul had encountered the others in one permutation or another, all of them interconnected, entangled, their pathways crisscrossing backward into prehistory, into space and infinity like some terrible mathematical formula.
________
An invader arrives in your computer and begins to glean the little diatoms of your identity.
Your name, your address, and so on; the various websites you visit as you wander through the Internet, your user names and passwords, your birth date, your mother's maiden name, favorite color, the blogs and news sites you read, the items you shop for, the credit card numbers you enter into the databases -
Which isn't necessarily you, of course. You are still an individual human being with a soul and a history, friends and relatives and coworkers who care about you, who can vouch for you: they recognize your face and your voice and your personality, and you are aware of your life as a continuous thread, a dependable unfolding story of yourself that you are telling to yourself, you wake up and feel fairly happy - happy in that bland, daily way that doesn't even recognize itself as happiness, moving into the empty hours that probably won't be anything more than a series of rote actions: showering and pouring coffee into a cup and dressing and turning a key in the ignition and driving down streets that are so familiar you don't even recall making certain turns and stops - though, yes, you are still present, your mind must have consciously carried out the procedure of braking at the corner and rolling the steering wheel beneath your palms and making a left onto the highway even though there is no memory at all of these actions. Perhaps if you were hypnotized such mundane moments could be retrieved, they are written on some file and stored, unused and useless in some neurological clerk's back room. Does it matter? You are still you, after all, through all of these hours and days; you are still whole -
But imagine yourself in pieces.
Imagine all the people who have known you for only a year or a month or a single encounter, imagine those people in a room together trying to assemble a portrait of you, the way an archeologist puts together the fragments of a ruined facade, or the bones of a caveman. Do you remember the fable of the seven blind men and the elephant?
It's not that easy, after all, to know what you're made up of.
Imagine the parts of yourself disassembled : imagine, for example, that nothing is left of you but a severed hand in an ice cooler. Perhaps there is one of your loved ones who could identify even this small piece. Here: the lines on your palm. The texture of your knuckles and wrinkled skin at the joints in the middle of your fingers. Calluses, scars. The shape of your nails.
Meanwhile, the invaders are busy carrying small pieces of you, tidbits of information you hardly think about, any more than you think about the flakes of skin that are drifting off you constantly, any more than you think of the millions of microscopic demodex mites that are crawling over you and feeding off your oil and skin cells.
. . . .
And meanwhile in another state perhaps a new version of you has already begun to be assembled, someone is using your name and your numbers, a piece of yourself dispersing and dispersing -
_______
Patricia was one of those girls that people had been making fun of for almost all the years of her life. She had a thick, spittley lisp, easily imitated and cartoonish, a bungler's speech impediment. She wasn't fat exactly, but lumpy in the wrong places, already middle-aged-looking in junior high, with an unfortunately broad, hen-like figure.
Once in grade school, they were walking to school together and some boys chased them, throwing pebbles.
Patricia, Patrasha,
Has a great big ass-a!
the boys sang.
. . .
She had the image of Patricia and her pet rats - the rats' cages stacked in the eaves, and her sister coming home late from her job at the Circle K, kneeling there in that red and blue vest with the name tag that said PATARCIA, talking to the rats in that crooning voice, the one rat, Mr. Niffler, with an enormous tumor coming out of its stomach that it was dragging around and her sister had paid to have the veterinarian remove it and then it grew back, the tumor, and still Patricia persisted. Showering the dying creature with love, buying it plastic toys, talking baby talk, making another appointment at the vet.
_______
. . . the carpet that looked like the fur of a worn-out stuffed animal.
______
He had grown fond of the old proprietress, Mrs. Matalov, who had been a magician's assistant back in the 1930's, and who now, even at ninety-three, had the stoic dignity of a beautiful woman who was about to be cut in half.
______
Please be wary, Miles! Beware of the police, and any government official, FBI, CIA, even local government. Do not have any contact with H&R Block or with anyone representing J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Chase, or Citigroup. Avoid anyone associated with Yale University. Also, I know that you have been in contact with the Matalov family in Cleveland, and all I can tell you is DO NOT TRUST THEM! Do not tell anyone about this letter! I hate to put you in an awkward position, but I urge you to get out of Cleveland as soon as possible, as quietly as possible. Miles, I am so sorry to have involved you in all this, I truly am. I wish I could go back and do things differently, that I could have been a better brother to you. But that chance is gone now, I know, and I fear that I won't be in this world much longer. Do you remember the Great Tower of Kallupilluk? That may be my final resting place, Miles. You may nver hear from me again.
I am, as always, yours, your one true brother,
and I love you so much.
Hayden
_______
Since their childhood, Hayden had been a great believer in the mysteries of the unknown - psychic phenomenon, past lives, UFOs, ley lines and spirit paths, astrology and numerology , etc., etc. And Miles was his biggest follower and supporter. His listener. He had never personally believed in such stuff - not in the way that Hayden appeared to - but there had been a time when he had been happy to play along, and perhaps for a while this alternate world had been a shared part of their brains. A dream they'd both been having together.
_______
Okay, Miles thought. He believed and he didn't believe, both at the same time. That was the condition of his life. Hayden was schizophrenic, and he was faking. He was a genius, and he had delusions of grandeur. He was paranoid, and the people were out to get him. All of these things were at least partially true at the same time.
_______
The more he thought about it, the more everything began to feel like a sham. It wasn't just his own faux family, it was the "family structure" in general. It was the social fabric itself, which was like a stage play that everyone was engaged in. Yes, he saw now what his history teacher meant when she talked about "constructs," "tissues of signs," "lacunae." Sitting there in his bed, he was aware of the other rooms, rows and stacks of them, the other students, all of them housed here waiting to be sorted and processed into jobs and sent down their various paths. He was aware of the other teenage boys who had slept in this very room, decades and decades of them, the dormitory like a boxcar being filled and refilled, year after year, and briefly he could have risen up out of his body, out of time, and watched the generic stream of them entering and exiting and being replaced.
. . .
And maybe it was at that moment that he broke loose from his life. His "life": it felt suddenly so abstract and tenuous.
_______
"Fugue." A dissociative psychological state marked by sudden, unexpected travel away from home or one's customary place of work, with inability to recall one's past, confusion about personal identity, or the assumption of a new identity, or a significant distress or impairment.
Which actually sounded very interesting, very appealing in some ways, although he supposed that if you decided to have a fugue state, it wasn't a true fugue state.
He was also failing psychology.
_______
"Learn what it is like in another life," he said. "Think hard about it, boys. People choose their lives; that's what I want you to remember. And what life will you choose for yourselves?"
_______
Her future was like a city she had never visited. A city on the other side of the country, and she was driving down the road, with all her possessions packed up in the backseat of the car, and the route was clearly marked on her map, and then she stopped at a rest area and saw that the place she was headed to wasn't there any longer. The town she was driving to had vanished - perhaps had never been there - and if she stopped to ask the way, the gas station attendant would look at her blankly. He wouldn't even know what she was talking about.
"I'm sorry, miss," he'd say gently, "I think you must be mistaken. I never heard of that place."
A sense of sundering.
In one life, there was a city you were on your way to. In another, it was just a place you'd invented.
_______
Mr. Pixie said, "If you had a daughter, you would know how I feel.
"I feel violated. I feel defiled by your pervert son," he told Stacey.
_______
A few blocks away was the street where his family used to live, and he could feel their old house sending out uninterpretable signals, telegraphing it's absence . . .
______
What did you call an absence that ceased to become an absence, what do you call a hole that has been filled in?
______
Sometimes Ryan imagined that he saw people from his past. Ever since his death, this had become a regular occurrence, these minor hallucinations, tricks of perception.
. . .
He was aware that it was just a trailing cobweb of subconscious, a misfiring synapse of memory, an undigested bit of the past playing games with him.
______
Watching horror movies was oddly relaxing, for both Lucy and her father, it was like a kind of music that confirmed the way they felt about the world. A shared understanding . . .
______
She had been in an alternate universe for a long time now . . .
she felt herself awaken. There was a flutter, a lifting, and then her thoughts began to fall into place.
_______
"There isn't just one version of the past, you know."
_______
"People like to contextualize themselves," he told them. "They like to feel they are connected to the larger forces of the world in some small way."
_______
It wasn't a hallucination. It wasn't anything except blankness, thick, fuzzy black spots that began to swell over his line of vision. Like mold spreading in a petri dish. Like the film cells of a movie melting.
_______
Blood had been running out of his hair into his face, and tears had made pathways through some of the dried blood, and when their eyes met, they barely recognized each other.
_______
Above the city, on the mountaintops, a Calvary of antennae and satellite dishes gazed down. And through the gaps in buildings he could occasionally see the great statue on Panecillo Hill, the Virgin of the Apocalypse in her dancing pose, hovering over the valley.
SEE COMMENTS FOR MORE FAVORITE PASSAGES
Contains a fun reference to Bate's Motel (Psycho) among many other things.
Related Works: Bleak House, The Secret Garden, The Return of the King, Origin, Upgrade, Sleepwalk, Ill Will, You Remind Me of Me, Stay Awake, Among the Missing, Fitting Ends, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Night Sister, Marjorie Morningstar, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text
"I myself, from the very beginning,
Seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium
Or a reflection in someone else's mirror,
Without flesh, without meaning, without a name.
Already I knew the list of crimes
That I was destined to commit."
- ANNA AKHMATOVA,
"Northern Elegies" (as quoted in Await Your Reply)
---------------------------------------------------
"First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do."
-EPICTETUS (as quoted in Await Your Reply)
---------------------------------------------------
Pirates, Magicians, Hypnotists - this is exactly my kind of book :-) I can not get enough of this.
From page one:
My favorite passage in the book (I love this stuff :-):
In the Acknowledgements, the author writes:
This book pays homage, and owes a great deal, to many fantastic and better writers who inspired me, both in childhood and beyond, including Robert Arthur, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury,Daphne du Maurier, John Fowles, Patrica Highsmith, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, Ira Levin, C.S. Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft, Vladimir Nabokov, Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Peter Straub, J.R.R. Tolkien, Thomas Tyron, and a number of others. One of the fun things about writing this book was making gestures and winks toward these writers that I've adored, I hope that they - living and dead - will forgive my incursions.
Other Favorite Passages:
"Above the wrist? Or below the wrist?"
_______
Their mother used to call them Hayden's "imaginary characters."
"Oh, Hayden," she would say, with exasperation. "Why can't you make up stories about happy people? Why does everything have to be so morbid?"
_______
When their father died, Hayden began to see connections in every face. Where had he come across that one before? In what life? No doubt nearly every soul had encountered the others in one permutation or another, all of them interconnected, entangled, their pathways crisscrossing backward into prehistory, into space and infinity like some terrible mathematical formula.
________
An invader arrives in your computer and begins to glean the little diatoms of your identity.
Your name, your address, and so on; the various websites you visit as you wander through the Internet, your user names and passwords, your birth date, your mother's maiden name, favorite color, the blogs and news sites you read, the items you shop for, the credit card numbers you enter into the databases -
Which isn't necessarily you, of course. You are still an individual human being with a soul and a history, friends and relatives and coworkers who care about you, who can vouch for you: they recognize your face and your voice and your personality, and you are aware of your life as a continuous thread, a dependable unfolding story of yourself that you are telling to yourself, you wake up and feel fairly happy - happy in that bland, daily way that doesn't even recognize itself as happiness, moving into the empty hours that probably won't be anything more than a series of rote actions: showering and pouring coffee into a cup and dressing and turning a key in the ignition and driving down streets that are so familiar you don't even recall making certain turns and stops - though, yes, you are still present, your mind must have consciously carried out the procedure of braking at the corner and rolling the steering wheel beneath your palms and making a left onto the highway even though there is no memory at all of these actions. Perhaps if you were hypnotized such mundane moments could be retrieved, they are written on some file and stored, unused and useless in some neurological clerk's back room. Does it matter? You are still you, after all, through all of these hours and days; you are still whole -
But imagine yourself in pieces.
Imagine all the people who have known you for only a year or a month or a single encounter, imagine those people in a room together trying to assemble a portrait of you, the way an archeologist puts together the fragments of a ruined facade, or the bones of a caveman. Do you remember the fable of the seven blind men and the elephant?
It's not that easy, after all, to know what you're made up of.
Imagine the parts of yourself disassembled : imagine, for example, that nothing is left of you but a severed hand in an ice cooler. Perhaps there is one of your loved ones who could identify even this small piece. Here: the lines on your palm. The texture of your knuckles and wrinkled skin at the joints in the middle of your fingers. Calluses, scars. The shape of your nails.
Meanwhile, the invaders are busy carrying small pieces of you, tidbits of information you hardly think about, any more than you think about the flakes of skin that are drifting off you constantly, any more than you think of the millions of microscopic demodex mites that are crawling over you and feeding off your oil and skin cells.
. . . .
And meanwhile in another state perhaps a new version of you has already begun to be assembled, someone is using your name and your numbers, a piece of yourself dispersing and dispersing -
_______
Patricia was one of those girls that people had been making fun of for almost all the years of her life. She had a thick, spittley lisp, easily imitated and cartoonish, a bungler's speech impediment. She wasn't fat exactly, but lumpy in the wrong places, already middle-aged-looking in junior high, with an unfortunately broad, hen-like figure.
Once in grade school, they were walking to school together and some boys chased them, throwing pebbles.
Patricia, Patrasha,
Has a great big ass-a!
the boys sang.
. . .
She had the image of Patricia and her pet rats - the rats' cages stacked in the eaves, and her sister coming home late from her job at the Circle K, kneeling there in that red and blue vest with the name tag that said PATARCIA, talking to the rats in that crooning voice, the one rat, Mr. Niffler, with an enormous tumor coming out of its stomach that it was dragging around and her sister had paid to have the veterinarian remove it and then it grew back, the tumor, and still Patricia persisted. Showering the dying creature with love, buying it plastic toys, talking baby talk, making another appointment at the vet.
_______
. . . the carpet that looked like the fur of a worn-out stuffed animal.
______
He had grown fond of the old proprietress, Mrs. Matalov, who had been a magician's assistant back in the 1930's, and who now, even at ninety-three, had the stoic dignity of a beautiful woman who was about to be cut in half.
______
Please be wary, Miles! Beware of the police, and any government official, FBI, CIA, even local government. Do not have any contact with H&R Block or with anyone representing J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Chase, or Citigroup. Avoid anyone associated with Yale University. Also, I know that you have been in contact with the Matalov family in Cleveland, and all I can tell you is DO NOT TRUST THEM! Do not tell anyone about this letter! I hate to put you in an awkward position, but I urge you to get out of Cleveland as soon as possible, as quietly as possible. Miles, I am so sorry to have involved you in all this, I truly am. I wish I could go back and do things differently, that I could have been a better brother to you. But that chance is gone now, I know, and I fear that I won't be in this world much longer. Do you remember the Great Tower of Kallupilluk? That may be my final resting place, Miles. You may nver hear from me again.
I am, as always, yours, your one true brother,
and I love you so much.
Hayden
_______
Since their childhood, Hayden had been a great believer in the mysteries of the unknown - psychic phenomenon, past lives, UFOs, ley lines and spirit paths, astrology and numerology , etc., etc. And Miles was his biggest follower and supporter. His listener. He had never personally believed in such stuff - not in the way that Hayden appeared to - but there had been a time when he had been happy to play along, and perhaps for a while this alternate world had been a shared part of their brains. A dream they'd both been having together.
_______
Okay, Miles thought. He believed and he didn't believe, both at the same time. That was the condition of his life. Hayden was schizophrenic, and he was faking. He was a genius, and he had delusions of grandeur. He was paranoid, and the people were out to get him. All of these things were at least partially true at the same time.
_______
The more he thought about it, the more everything began to feel like a sham. It wasn't just his own faux family, it was the "family structure" in general. It was the social fabric itself, which was like a stage play that everyone was engaged in. Yes, he saw now what his history teacher meant when she talked about "constructs," "tissues of signs," "lacunae." Sitting there in his bed, he was aware of the other rooms, rows and stacks of them, the other students, all of them housed here waiting to be sorted and processed into jobs and sent down their various paths. He was aware of the other teenage boys who had slept in this very room, decades and decades of them, the dormitory like a boxcar being filled and refilled, year after year, and briefly he could have risen up out of his body, out of time, and watched the generic stream of them entering and exiting and being replaced.
. . .
And maybe it was at that moment that he broke loose from his life. His "life": it felt suddenly so abstract and tenuous.
_______
"Fugue." A dissociative psychological state marked by sudden, unexpected travel away from home or one's customary place of work, with inability to recall one's past, confusion about personal identity, or the assumption of a new identity, or a significant distress or impairment.
Which actually sounded very interesting, very appealing in some ways, although he supposed that if you decided to have a fugue state, it wasn't a true fugue state.
He was also failing psychology.
_______
"Learn what it is like in another life," he said. "Think hard about it, boys. People choose their lives; that's what I want you to remember. And what life will you choose for yourselves?"
_______
Her future was like a city she had never visited. A city on the other side of the country, and she was driving down the road, with all her possessions packed up in the backseat of the car, and the route was clearly marked on her map, and then she stopped at a rest area and saw that the place she was headed to wasn't there any longer. The town she was driving to had vanished - perhaps had never been there - and if she stopped to ask the way, the gas station attendant would look at her blankly. He wouldn't even know what she was talking about.
"I'm sorry, miss," he'd say gently, "I think you must be mistaken. I never heard of that place."
A sense of sundering.
In one life, there was a city you were on your way to. In another, it was just a place you'd invented.
_______
Mr. Pixie said, "If you had a daughter, you would know how I feel.
"I feel violated. I feel defiled by your pervert son," he told Stacey.
_______
A few blocks away was the street where his family used to live, and he could feel their old house sending out uninterpretable signals, telegraphing it's absence . . .
______
What did you call an absence that ceased to become an absence, what do you call a hole that has been filled in?
______
Sometimes Ryan imagined that he saw people from his past. Ever since his death, this had become a regular occurrence, these minor hallucinations, tricks of perception.
. . .
He was aware that it was just a trailing cobweb of subconscious, a misfiring synapse of memory, an undigested bit of the past playing games with him.
______
Watching horror movies was oddly relaxing, for both Lucy and her father, it was like a kind of music that confirmed the way they felt about the world. A shared understanding . . .
______
She had been in an alternate universe for a long time now . . .
she felt herself awaken. There was a flutter, a lifting, and then her thoughts began to fall into place.
_______
"There isn't just one version of the past, you know."
_______
"People like to contextualize themselves," he told them. "They like to feel they are connected to the larger forces of the world in some small way."
_______
It wasn't a hallucination. It wasn't anything except blankness, thick, fuzzy black spots that began to swell over his line of vision. Like mold spreading in a petri dish. Like the film cells of a movie melting.
_______
Blood had been running out of his hair into his face, and tears had made pathways through some of the dried blood, and when their eyes met, they barely recognized each other.
_______
Above the city, on the mountaintops, a Calvary of antennae and satellite dishes gazed down. And through the gaps in buildings he could occasionally see the great statue on Panecillo Hill, the Virgin of the Apocalypse in her dancing pose, hovering over the valley.
SEE COMMENTS FOR MORE FAVORITE PASSAGES
February 26, 2011
E-e-r-i-e. It is irresponsible to tell you much more than that, because this book hinges on the reader's simultaneous suspicion and disarmament at every twist and turn. Much of the book is necessarily circumspect, which made me feel distant and dislocated during the first 2/3 of the story. And although a lot of it takes place in wide open, (and often) desolate places, I felt a contraction of space and time, and a reader's claustrophobia. The narrative edges collapsed into a flat darkness, and I frequently wondered where I am, where this is going. But an ominous atmosphere of mendacity and a disjointed, shadowy sense of the sinister pervaded.
Alternating chapters distinguish the storylines. In the opening pages, we encounter a disturbing and unusual scene of vague, escaped violence and torment, as Ryan and his father are headed to the hospital. In the next chapter, we are introduced to recent high-school graduate Lucy and her lover, George, who was her twelfth-grade history teacher. They are headed toward a new life, far away from where they were teacher and student. Subsequently, we join Miles, a lonely man obsessed with the disappearance of his twin brother. These disparate narratives continue to alternately build with greater complexity and with mounting tension. All will be revealed by the closing pages, although the journey there is often ambiguous. I often felt restive and off-kilter while turning the pages, anxious for the story to become more transparent. I suspect that this was the author's intent, as these holes in our comprehension actually add weight and dimension to the story by giving it greater immediacy and urgency. Our participation as a reader is paramount to the theme of the story. I don't want to explain too much more, because I do not want to dilute the reader's tension and uncertainty. What I can say is that the question of identity, in its many guises, is the thing we are chasing, while it chases us.
Dan Chaon delivers this dark and dire tale with a cagey cachet. I am confident it will inspire lively discussion and debate between readers.
Alternating chapters distinguish the storylines. In the opening pages, we encounter a disturbing and unusual scene of vague, escaped violence and torment, as Ryan and his father are headed to the hospital. In the next chapter, we are introduced to recent high-school graduate Lucy and her lover, George, who was her twelfth-grade history teacher. They are headed toward a new life, far away from where they were teacher and student. Subsequently, we join Miles, a lonely man obsessed with the disappearance of his twin brother. These disparate narratives continue to alternately build with greater complexity and with mounting tension. All will be revealed by the closing pages, although the journey there is often ambiguous. I often felt restive and off-kilter while turning the pages, anxious for the story to become more transparent. I suspect that this was the author's intent, as these holes in our comprehension actually add weight and dimension to the story by giving it greater immediacy and urgency. Our participation as a reader is paramount to the theme of the story. I don't want to explain too much more, because I do not want to dilute the reader's tension and uncertainty. What I can say is that the question of identity, in its many guises, is the thing we are chasing, while it chases us.
Dan Chaon delivers this dark and dire tale with a cagey cachet. I am confident it will inspire lively discussion and debate between readers.
November 18, 2013
Don't read anything (except this) about Dan Chaon's mesmerizing new novel, "Await Your Reply." You need to step into this work of psychological suspense completely unprepared for what lurks in here. If somebody starts telling you what they liked best, put your fingers in your ears and sing: "La, la, la, la!" But you can trust me -- which is just what all the manipulative creeps in this novel say.
Here's what can be safely revealed about "Await Your Reply": It contains three separate stories about people driving away from their homes, abandoning their lives and remaking themselves -- what's called "the ruin lifestyle." Chaon narrates each of these stories in the same intimate, intense voice. In one, a depressed young man named Ryan drops out of college to live in the Michigan woods with his long-absent father, a master of international credit card fraud. In another, Lucy, an orphaned high school girl, runs away with her history teacher, who promises her a life of wealth and travel. And in the third, a distraught man named Miles closes in on his elusive twin near the Arctic Circle after years of cruel taunts and last-minute disappearances. They're all disastrously naive about what's waiting for them.
Any one of these arresting plots could have sustained the entire book, but Chaon rotates through them chapter by chapter. Not only that, but the chronology of each story is jumbled so that the novel isn't so much cubed as Rubik's Cubed. I know that sounds like a literary headache, but these are engrossing, nerve-racking storylines that continually hand off to one another without breaking stride, leaving us as fascinated as we are disoriented. There are Russian gangsters and hypnotists and an old magic shop that teeters on surrealism. Violence -- gory, sexual, painful abuse -- runs just beneath the surface, but Chaon usually maintains a coy deniability, never saying anything particularly threatening while making sure we suspect these characters are in deadly peril. Other times, he takes the gloves off -- and more. You will never forget the scene involving a severed hand.
Chaon's celebrated first novel, "You Remind Me of Me," also involved flashes of grisly violence and an intense connection between long-separated twins. But as much as I enjoyed that debut, I found its scrambled, intentionally oblique opening chapters frustrating. Here, Chaon's sleight of hand is subtler, even though he's engaged in an even more radical scrambling of events. The result is a novel that succeeds as brilliantly as the short stories that have won him a National Book Award nomination, a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Part of what gives "Await Your Reply" its eerie edge is the way allusions to classic tales of horror and suspense prowl through these pages. The abandoned Victorian hotel where Lucy and her high school teacher hide out kept reminding me of the Bates Motel of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," and Miles's trek toward the Arctic Circle to find his unstable twin contains uncanny echoes of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." Of course, Stephen King haunts the backwoods where Ryan is holed up with his computer-genius dad, and if you're one of the eight people who've ever read Melville's "The Confidence-Man," you'll spot that shadowy shape-shifter slipping between these chapters, too.
Chaon has been tending in this direction for several years, crossbreeding elements of horror and suspense with his heartbreaking stories of lost souls and fractured families. Adopted as an infant, he's returned again and again, as he does in this novel, to a lingering sense of abandonment and alienation, the desperate search for connection in a world where personal identity seems unstable and ephemeral. Indeed, that's the theme that seems to draw him back to tales of terror, as he explored in an afterword to a Signet edition of "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde" and his short story in Peter Straub's "Poe's Children," an anthology of the best new horror writing.
All the characters in "Await Your Reply" are tantalized by the prospect of casting off their old selves and taking on new personae. But they're also terrified by how easily they can be reinvented, usurped or even dissipated. "Who would you be if you weren't Lucy?" she asks herself before she falls into "a state of grim panic." "What life will you choose for yourselves?" Miles's father asks his identical sons, who will someday make a series of very bad choices.
Chaon zeroes in on the strange irony that an age so obsessed with individuality should also give rise to such fluid and ephemeral identities. We're all a matrix of screen names, avatars, credit card numbers, passwords, browser histories and cookies -- an ever-evolving collection of data. But the same technology that allows us to express ourselves to anyone on the planet has also made it impossible to tell who anyone really is. If you haven't already placed it, the novel's familiar-sounding title comes from that ubiquitous e-mail scam in which some alleged relative of an African businessman asks you to take temporary possession of $20 million. "There is something almost adorable about its awkwardness," Chaon notes; these imploring strangers with their halting English "await your reply." But who are they? And for that matter, who are we?
Chaon spins out the high-tech mechanics of such computer fraud even while exploring its metaphysical implications. "The invaders are busily carrying away small pieces of you," he writes, "tidbits of information you hardly think about, any more than you think about the flakes of skin that are drifting off of you constantly. . . . And meanwhile in another state perhaps a new version of you has already begun to be assembled, someone is using your name and your numbers, a piece of yourself dispersed and dispersing."
Despite the ultramodern, Internet-driven elements of its plot, "Await Your Reply" is rooted in the oldest American concerns. "What kind of person," Miles wonders in desperation, "decides that they can throw everything away and -- reinvent themselves?" We know the answer to that question; our ancestors are the answer to that question. But other mysteries lurk in this hypnotic novel that you'll never guess.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
Here's what can be safely revealed about "Await Your Reply": It contains three separate stories about people driving away from their homes, abandoning their lives and remaking themselves -- what's called "the ruin lifestyle." Chaon narrates each of these stories in the same intimate, intense voice. In one, a depressed young man named Ryan drops out of college to live in the Michigan woods with his long-absent father, a master of international credit card fraud. In another, Lucy, an orphaned high school girl, runs away with her history teacher, who promises her a life of wealth and travel. And in the third, a distraught man named Miles closes in on his elusive twin near the Arctic Circle after years of cruel taunts and last-minute disappearances. They're all disastrously naive about what's waiting for them.
Any one of these arresting plots could have sustained the entire book, but Chaon rotates through them chapter by chapter. Not only that, but the chronology of each story is jumbled so that the novel isn't so much cubed as Rubik's Cubed. I know that sounds like a literary headache, but these are engrossing, nerve-racking storylines that continually hand off to one another without breaking stride, leaving us as fascinated as we are disoriented. There are Russian gangsters and hypnotists and an old magic shop that teeters on surrealism. Violence -- gory, sexual, painful abuse -- runs just beneath the surface, but Chaon usually maintains a coy deniability, never saying anything particularly threatening while making sure we suspect these characters are in deadly peril. Other times, he takes the gloves off -- and more. You will never forget the scene involving a severed hand.
Chaon's celebrated first novel, "You Remind Me of Me," also involved flashes of grisly violence and an intense connection between long-separated twins. But as much as I enjoyed that debut, I found its scrambled, intentionally oblique opening chapters frustrating. Here, Chaon's sleight of hand is subtler, even though he's engaged in an even more radical scrambling of events. The result is a novel that succeeds as brilliantly as the short stories that have won him a National Book Award nomination, a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Part of what gives "Await Your Reply" its eerie edge is the way allusions to classic tales of horror and suspense prowl through these pages. The abandoned Victorian hotel where Lucy and her high school teacher hide out kept reminding me of the Bates Motel of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," and Miles's trek toward the Arctic Circle to find his unstable twin contains uncanny echoes of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." Of course, Stephen King haunts the backwoods where Ryan is holed up with his computer-genius dad, and if you're one of the eight people who've ever read Melville's "The Confidence-Man," you'll spot that shadowy shape-shifter slipping between these chapters, too.
Chaon has been tending in this direction for several years, crossbreeding elements of horror and suspense with his heartbreaking stories of lost souls and fractured families. Adopted as an infant, he's returned again and again, as he does in this novel, to a lingering sense of abandonment and alienation, the desperate search for connection in a world where personal identity seems unstable and ephemeral. Indeed, that's the theme that seems to draw him back to tales of terror, as he explored in an afterword to a Signet edition of "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde" and his short story in Peter Straub's "Poe's Children," an anthology of the best new horror writing.
All the characters in "Await Your Reply" are tantalized by the prospect of casting off their old selves and taking on new personae. But they're also terrified by how easily they can be reinvented, usurped or even dissipated. "Who would you be if you weren't Lucy?" she asks herself before she falls into "a state of grim panic." "What life will you choose for yourselves?" Miles's father asks his identical sons, who will someday make a series of very bad choices.
Chaon zeroes in on the strange irony that an age so obsessed with individuality should also give rise to such fluid and ephemeral identities. We're all a matrix of screen names, avatars, credit card numbers, passwords, browser histories and cookies -- an ever-evolving collection of data. But the same technology that allows us to express ourselves to anyone on the planet has also made it impossible to tell who anyone really is. If you haven't already placed it, the novel's familiar-sounding title comes from that ubiquitous e-mail scam in which some alleged relative of an African businessman asks you to take temporary possession of $20 million. "There is something almost adorable about its awkwardness," Chaon notes; these imploring strangers with their halting English "await your reply." But who are they? And for that matter, who are we?
Chaon spins out the high-tech mechanics of such computer fraud even while exploring its metaphysical implications. "The invaders are busily carrying away small pieces of you," he writes, "tidbits of information you hardly think about, any more than you think about the flakes of skin that are drifting off of you constantly. . . . And meanwhile in another state perhaps a new version of you has already begun to be assembled, someone is using your name and your numbers, a piece of yourself dispersed and dispersing."
Despite the ultramodern, Internet-driven elements of its plot, "Await Your Reply" is rooted in the oldest American concerns. "What kind of person," Miles wonders in desperation, "decides that they can throw everything away and -- reinvent themselves?" We know the answer to that question; our ancestors are the answer to that question. But other mysteries lurk in this hypnotic novel that you'll never guess.
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August 16, 2010
Await Your Reply examines the question of identity in old and new ways. Throughout the book there's a philosophical undercurrent dealing with that ancient question of what constitutes a "self." The plot ties into that question using the more recent issue of identity theft, which allows people to erase their life histories and "be" an entirely different person.
The exploration of these themes was, for me, the most appealing thing about the book. The switches and stumbles of the characters made me think deep thoughts. Who are you, really, if you strip away all identifying markers? Are you still the same person if you abandon all the touchstones of your selfhood? Would I want to walk away from my entire life? Just ditch everyone and everything, like these characters do? (The answer is NO. I gotta be me, for better or worse.)
The story and its resolution (or lack of one) was a bit of a let-down. The writing is excellent. The characters are original and well defined. But as I began reading, I felt like I'd been duped. It's supposed to be a novel. In reality, it's three fragmented novellas that are supposed to converge and never quite do so in any satisfying way. You get alternating chapters of the three stories, which appear to be unrelated for most of the book. The connection is revealed (sort of) by the end. But it seemed to me that Chaon had a superb idea for an elaborate plot and couldn't quite find a way to bring it to a grand conclusion.
All my cluck-clucking aside, I do recommend reading the book. It's interesting and thought provoking, and at times humorous.
I loved the irony of identity thieves having their stolen identities stolen from them. My big crack-up moment was when Ryan says:
"What do you mean, 'stolen' your identity? Which one?"
The exploration of these themes was, for me, the most appealing thing about the book. The switches and stumbles of the characters made me think deep thoughts. Who are you, really, if you strip away all identifying markers? Are you still the same person if you abandon all the touchstones of your selfhood? Would I want to walk away from my entire life? Just ditch everyone and everything, like these characters do? (The answer is NO. I gotta be me, for better or worse.)
The story and its resolution (or lack of one) was a bit of a let-down. The writing is excellent. The characters are original and well defined. But as I began reading, I felt like I'd been duped. It's supposed to be a novel. In reality, it's three fragmented novellas that are supposed to converge and never quite do so in any satisfying way. You get alternating chapters of the three stories, which appear to be unrelated for most of the book. The connection is revealed (sort of) by the end. But it seemed to me that Chaon had a superb idea for an elaborate plot and couldn't quite find a way to bring it to a grand conclusion.
All my cluck-clucking aside, I do recommend reading the book. It's interesting and thought provoking, and at times humorous.
I loved the irony of identity thieves having their stolen identities stolen from them. My big crack-up moment was when Ryan says:
"What do you mean, 'stolen' your identity? Which one?"
June 5, 2010
The story starts with three seemingly unconnected narratives. First, that of Ryan, who in the opening scene is being rushed to the hospital with his detached hand. Then also Lucy, recent high school grad running away with her history teacher. Finally, there's Miles, searching for his missing twin brother. What propels you through the book is wanting to find out how these three connect up. I had some guesses, some right, but didn't get quite how all they all fitted till the end--the author says it was the same for him, that he wrote it with those first scenes and characters in mind, then wrote them trying to figure out how they connect--maybe that helped in keeping the sense of mystery, although in the end it does fit so nicely with such a firm click there's a sense of inevitability.
Besides the mystery, the theme of identity keeps recurring in this novel in interesting ways as both the key to the mystery but in a way that also has you turning in your mind what makes up your own identity. The way identity theft in the information age plays into this makes this a very contemporary novel, one that couldn't have been written ten years ago. Although Lucy and Ryan have less than nice aspects to their characters, I did come to care for them (and Miles) and that was another source of suspense as you watch them get deeper into what you worry cannot end well. The prose is elegantly clean and sucked me in. One of those novels you better pick up when you can clear some hours to spend--because you won't want to put it down.
Besides the mystery, the theme of identity keeps recurring in this novel in interesting ways as both the key to the mystery but in a way that also has you turning in your mind what makes up your own identity. The way identity theft in the information age plays into this makes this a very contemporary novel, one that couldn't have been written ten years ago. Although Lucy and Ryan have less than nice aspects to their characters, I did come to care for them (and Miles) and that was another source of suspense as you watch them get deeper into what you worry cannot end well. The prose is elegantly clean and sucked me in. One of those novels you better pick up when you can clear some hours to spend--because you won't want to put it down.
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July 25, 2011This book is c-r-e-e-p-y because you realize just how real the situations the characters find themselves in can be. Dan Chaon is an amazing writer and I found this book to be a fantastic, quick read, that I probably need to read over again in order to ensure I didn't miss any of the nuance.
This book tells three parallel stories: Lucy, who flees her Ohio town with her high school teacher; Ryan, a college student struggling with the pressures of being who his parents want him to be, who finds out a secret about his life; and Miles, who has spent years running all over the place in search of his twin brother Hayden, who disappeared years ago but keeps telling him where he is and then eluding him. How these characters interact is one of the things that makes this book so creepy, and the fact that the story has at its premise identity theft (and how easy it is to pull off) is the other. As the book ultimately unfolded, I found myself a little confused, but it didn't detract from the power of this book. I'd also recommend reading Chaon's "You Remind Me of Me." Fantastic!!
This book tells three parallel stories: Lucy, who flees her Ohio town with her high school teacher; Ryan, a college student struggling with the pressures of being who his parents want him to be, who finds out a secret about his life; and Miles, who has spent years running all over the place in search of his twin brother Hayden, who disappeared years ago but keeps telling him where he is and then eluding him. How these characters interact is one of the things that makes this book so creepy, and the fact that the story has at its premise identity theft (and how easy it is to pull off) is the other. As the book ultimately unfolded, I found myself a little confused, but it didn't detract from the power of this book. I'd also recommend reading Chaon's "You Remind Me of Me." Fantastic!!
January 1, 2013
(4.5 stars)
If you haven't already made acquaintance with Dan Chaon's work, do so. Like yesterday. Might as well start with Await Your Reply a taut thriller with a focus on identity: Identity theft, mistaken identity, multiple identities. Three seemingly separate disparate stories, weave back and forth and comprise a tapestry of wackitude you're not soon to forget. The ending was not quite as satisfying as I'd hoped, but I'm giving the guy the benefit of the doubt as much of his repertoire seems to lie in short-story writing (where success isn't measured by endings); not to mention he wrote this while is longtime wife (an author herself, who served as his copy editor) was dying of cancer. I can't possibly imagine churning out something as hauntingly beautiful as this while enduring such wretchedness. Oh, and if you're not hooked by the first three pages, I'd be stunned. Best novel start ever. Really.
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July 17, 2012I started this at 10:50 am while waiting for a dentist appointment and was finished with it by 11:00 that night. That will tell you something about how gripping it was.
October 13, 2017
Patience required! Apart from the finely tuned personality breakdowns for each named character, very little else is "clear" during at least 1/2 of this novel. That's a lot of pages with flipping namesake stories. Not much of connection seems to exist other than one of troubled and at often times a inherent and roving unlike of self-identity. Each to their own place or spot or fit or job. And of course, family. Bad mixes all around. No satisfaction for the present coupled by even less in the young for an anticipation for their future life. Smiling faces don't live in this book. If you want happy stories, this is NOT the one.
That's why I gave it 4 stars though, because of the superb study of what identity IS. Because who and what IS takes center stage here. Identity itself, the concept and the practice. One's own belief in who one is. And what others believe we are and what that person "is" called, or named or how they "fit". Is it a constant state or vaguely drifting secure on a tethered line over time and aging, or is it floating off to another level of air year to year. Or month to month.
It's tricky, this study. And this author is savvy on the human psychology to define it. But he also holds great deficits too, IMHO. He touches on the void but really doesn't enter it. Because a strong anchor of human nature IS identity and purpose to "place". Lack COULD be insane if it is constantly altered or eradicated. Or it could make the insane, more insane. Identity eradicated either purposely, accidentally or cruelly stolen. Abrupt with viciousness, or plotted to happen in sequences? Identity stolen or claimed. Taken or reheld? Money, honor, purpose, no freedom of movement in prison perhaps! All outcomes. All former "knowns" gone. Vanished. Because identity was stolen- it is not only the thief who has produced their own gain, but the victim who has suffered the great unanswered loss. Justice impossible to restore. Like trying to unring a bell.
A think piece in the end. This book is much more a think piece than a who-dun-it of any common sort. But it takes an awful long time to get there. Despite the writing and knowledge to ride that road showing considerable dexterity.
I felt like Miles too at the ending. Not satisfied. Once you read it, you will know what I mean here.
The ending was the "reality" of Hayden. Not a fan.
My enjoyment scale was a 2 for the first 100 pages and increased as the book page number did. Plummeting at the end to a 3. But the skill in captures for identity deviousness here made me round it up.
That's why I gave it 4 stars though, because of the superb study of what identity IS. Because who and what IS takes center stage here. Identity itself, the concept and the practice. One's own belief in who one is. And what others believe we are and what that person "is" called, or named or how they "fit". Is it a constant state or vaguely drifting secure on a tethered line over time and aging, or is it floating off to another level of air year to year. Or month to month.
It's tricky, this study. And this author is savvy on the human psychology to define it. But he also holds great deficits too, IMHO. He touches on the void but really doesn't enter it. Because a strong anchor of human nature IS identity and purpose to "place". Lack COULD be insane if it is constantly altered or eradicated. Or it could make the insane, more insane. Identity eradicated either purposely, accidentally or cruelly stolen. Abrupt with viciousness, or plotted to happen in sequences? Identity stolen or claimed. Taken or reheld? Money, honor, purpose, no freedom of movement in prison perhaps! All outcomes. All former "knowns" gone. Vanished. Because identity was stolen- it is not only the thief who has produced their own gain, but the victim who has suffered the great unanswered loss. Justice impossible to restore. Like trying to unring a bell.
A think piece in the end. This book is much more a think piece than a who-dun-it of any common sort. But it takes an awful long time to get there. Despite the writing and knowledge to ride that road showing considerable dexterity.
I felt like Miles too at the ending. Not satisfied. Once you read it, you will know what I mean here.
The ending was the "reality" of Hayden. Not a fan.
My enjoyment scale was a 2 for the first 100 pages and increased as the book page number did. Plummeting at the end to a 3. But the skill in captures for identity deviousness here made me round it up.
September 4, 2015
So impressed was I by Chaon's You Remind Me of Me, that I absolutely had to read more by the author and this one didn't disappoint. It actually impressed further, terrific sophomore accomplishment. Chaon revisits the same themes from his debut here, themes obviously dear to his heart, like adoption, relationships between brothers and most importantly the nature of identity. That's what Await Your Reply is about really, a quest for identity, stolen, invented or otherwise, a meditation on the concept of it, how solid or how malleable it really is and what remains as a constant when all the superficial aspects are changed around. That need for connection, to be loved and accepted for who you are, even if you're not sure who that is. The real star here is the actual structure of the novel itself, three parts...first one where the reader is introduced to three distinct storylines and their denizens, second where the reader starts suspecting the connections between the characters of being less that casually tenuous and third one where, stunningly, surprisingly, all is revealed and like a magic trick done well, it leaves the reader properly amazed. Yeah, it's that kind of book, it's that good, that interesting, that original. Chaon characterizes his works as ghost/supernatural sort of things, where the supernatural elements remain behind the curtain. And it really works too, there is a hypnotic quality to his writing, a mesmerizing tint to his narrative. And so if you identify as a reader of quality literature or want to be one (since apparently the difference is negligible with strong enough intent between what is and what can be) this book is really a must. Highly recommended.
August 27, 2010
This book is mediocre, but not a waste of time. It is a quick and easy read, so the short time that it takes to read it doesn't feel like a waste (and the predicibility of the plot sppeds things along too). AYR is the story (actually three stories) of people who abandon their identities, whether for financial gain, the sheer joy of manipulating others, or a complete disgust with true identity. My biggest complaint about this book is that it tries to be suspenseful, but it fails miserably in its efforts. When it comes to the craft of creating suspense, I've been spoiled by Robert Ludlum and his ability to create an unshakable paranoia (Osterman Weekend, to name one example), where the author lulls the reader into trusting certain characters, then exposes the deception of those same characters by tying together hints that were there from the very beginning, until the reader is suspicious of absolutely every character. I could tell that Chaon was trying to do exactly that in AYR, but he just doesn't have the technique that Ludlum has.
I'm glad I borrowed this book from the library because it is not a keeper.
I'm glad I borrowed this book from the library because it is not a keeper.
January 1, 2010
Effortless,
...like drinking a clear glass full of cool water... his words glide along the pages and tell their story with grace and precision.
This is a story that grabs you softly, but before you realize it, you cannot put it down.
The characters are diverse and complicated in their seeming simplicity. Mr. Chaon manages to let us peek into their inner lives, and, in doing so, we find bits and pieces of ourselves.
He is extremely adept at allowing us to step into present day reality, while not being bombarded by the very technology that he uses to ensnare us in the end.
From the opening page until the very last, there is no doubt why 'Await Your Reply' was on every respected Top Book List in 2009.
...like drinking a clear glass full of cool water... his words glide along the pages and tell their story with grace and precision.
This is a story that grabs you softly, but before you realize it, you cannot put it down.
The characters are diverse and complicated in their seeming simplicity. Mr. Chaon manages to let us peek into their inner lives, and, in doing so, we find bits and pieces of ourselves.
He is extremely adept at allowing us to step into present day reality, while not being bombarded by the very technology that he uses to ensnare us in the end.
From the opening page until the very last, there is no doubt why 'Await Your Reply' was on every respected Top Book List in 2009.
September 20, 2009
Apparently, there are two reactions to this book--you either love it or hate it. I certainly didn't hate it, but my overall assessment couldn't be described as anything more than lukewarm. There are six main characters (actually less or more depending upon how you interpret the plot...can you see why I was frustrated???)...let's just say there are ostensibly six characters in this novel: Ryan & Jay; Lucy & George; Miles and Hayden. Keeping that many plots and balls juggling in the air is difficult, and it's a hallmark of a good novelist that s/he can do it skillfully while maintaining your interest. But it didn't really work here in my opinion, even after the author eventually (another critique...he keeps the reader guessing far too long) plays his hand, so to speak. I think this was just a plain ol' case of me not warming to any of the characters, which is hardly surprising, given the author's argument...which is essentially very nihilistic. Doesn't make for cheerful reading.
August 24, 2010
Wow! This novel blew me away. I read it for a reading group and it was my pick, but it turned out to be different and very much more that I thought it would be from the blurbs I had seen. Yes, it includes identity theft as a plot point, but actually it is about identity: how do we get our identity as a person, how do we become confused about it, lose it, change it? While identity is a timely concept and the story is modern, somehow Dan Chaon also makes it universal, timeless and personal to the reader.
Then about halfway in, I realized I was reading a sort of hybrid thriller and a mystery, so had to search back in my memory for clues I hadn't spotted as clues. Very tricky, Mr Chaon.
There are three story lines, each with its own main character, but whenever I put the book down, I could only remember one or at most two of the characters. I began to feel a little bit concerned about my short term memory and went through my daily activities with anxiety and other creepy emotions. Turned out there was a very good reason for all that, which I can't mention because it would be spoiler material.
I don't imagine I will ever forget this book although someday I would like to reread it. The atmosphere of our oddly over-connected but disconnected modern culture which the author has created just out of those common elements of plot, character and description made me look at several aspects of my life in a completely new way. Now that is some righteous fiction!
Then about halfway in, I realized I was reading a sort of hybrid thriller and a mystery, so had to search back in my memory for clues I hadn't spotted as clues. Very tricky, Mr Chaon.
There are three story lines, each with its own main character, but whenever I put the book down, I could only remember one or at most two of the characters. I began to feel a little bit concerned about my short term memory and went through my daily activities with anxiety and other creepy emotions. Turned out there was a very good reason for all that, which I can't mention because it would be spoiler material.
I don't imagine I will ever forget this book although someday I would like to reread it. The atmosphere of our oddly over-connected but disconnected modern culture which the author has created just out of those common elements of plot, character and description made me look at several aspects of my life in a completely new way. Now that is some righteous fiction!
July 20, 2011
I thought this book was pretty engaging, and I am waffling between three and four stars. I usually don't see the twist coming but I got it pretty much immediately with this one. The alternating storylines sort of made each one shallower than I wanted it to be, I think. Like I just wanted him to kick it up a notch, because the premise of each of the three stories is so rich. Because actually, not much really happens in each of the three plotlines; each of the characters is on the edge on something at the beginning, and most of the book is made up of elaborate backstories to explain how they got there. And then the thing happens and the book is over. If that makes any sense. Also at times I thought it was repetitive, like he thought you would forget details from the last time he was on that storyline. That being said, I definitely thought about this book after I was done. It left a lingering feeling of creepiness, and it did have some really incredible moments. My Goodreads reviews are always specific criticism and vague praise. The end.
November 4, 2009
I am now a dedicated Dan Chaon fan, though I'd be a much more convincing one if I knew how to pronounce his last name. You Remind Me of Me simply blew me away, and I knew I was in for a good ride with this one. Chaon introduces you to characters that seem fully formed and real, people we might know or live right next door, but as we spend time with them, we learn that we don't know all we think we did, which is true always, in life. To transfer that dynamic from real life onto the page is a real author's skill, and Chaon has it. He writes in a pointilistic style, and as the images come into focus you suddenly realize the portrait staring back at you is not what you first thought. Delicious. Chaon, write faster, I want more.
December 21, 2009
The storyline of this book is a little bit like listening to a long, involved story told by someone who frequently interjects with some thoughts along the lines of "oh, but, wait, I forgot to tell you about..."
The difference is, it was neither annoying or disjointed enough to make me want to walk away, Chaon's writing just keeps wrapping you inside the story.
The difference is, it was neither annoying or disjointed enough to make me want to walk away, Chaon's writing just keeps wrapping you inside the story.
January 7, 2021
3 Stars for Await Your Reply (audiobook) by Dan Chaon read by Kirby Heyborne. I see a lot of people really like this story but it just didn’t connect with me.
September 19, 2009
You Remind Me of Me is one of my all-time favorites, so maybe I expected too much. But this one relatively disappointed me. Yes, it moves along at a decent clip, and I enjoyed the gradual unfurling of all the personalities. But even I saw the "twist"/connection coming about halfway through, and if Credulous, Gullible I can pick it up that easily, believe me, it's probably too obvious. The characters are pretty unlikable and in some cases frustrating throughout.
The one thing that is staying with me: the poignancy of the only two times that Hayden deceives for the benefit of anyone but himself or his wallet -- the vain attempt to attract Dylan's violence onto himself instead of on Ryan, and his leaving the "suicide note" in the hope of "freeing" Miles to stop seeking him. A morbid irony in the fact that the only significant time he tells the truth ("Jay is in Russia") he is so savagely (indirectly) punished for it.
I agree with the comparison to Pulp Fiction, but only to an extent. The novel ends "feeling" relatively okay - closure, and even a measure of peace for Ryan - while in fact Hayden/Mike/Jay/George/David is (I assume) coming to a violent end in the hotel room in Ivory Coast. Pulp Fiction is the opposite - you leave with a sense of unremitting bloody gloom - and yet when you piece together each storyline it turns out they have (chronologically) ended on "up" notes.
Lucy walking around with new clothes and a new identity on, with $150,000 in cash on her back, failing to just take off, seemed a little untrue to her character, especially in the face of her growing discontent with and even fear of George/David. How could she be so stupid and passive? Are we to believe that George/David was that mesmerizing and charismatic? That plotline seemed to go to pains to show her disillusionment, and then at the moment that you are itching for her to take off... she never does. The only reason she leaves with the money, ultimately, is that she has no CHOICE. That was not satisfying to me.
The one thing that is staying with me: the poignancy of the only two times that Hayden deceives for the benefit of anyone but himself or his wallet -- the vain attempt to attract Dylan's violence onto himself instead of on Ryan, and his leaving the "suicide note" in the hope of "freeing" Miles to stop seeking him. A morbid irony in the fact that the only significant time he tells the truth ("Jay is in Russia") he is so savagely (indirectly) punished for it.
I agree with the comparison to Pulp Fiction, but only to an extent. The novel ends "feeling" relatively okay - closure, and even a measure of peace for Ryan - while in fact Hayden/Mike/Jay/George/David is (I assume) coming to a violent end in the hotel room in Ivory Coast. Pulp Fiction is the opposite - you leave with a sense of unremitting bloody gloom - and yet when you piece together each storyline it turns out they have (chronologically) ended on "up" notes.
Lucy walking around with new clothes and a new identity on, with $150,000 in cash on her back, failing to just take off, seemed a little untrue to her character, especially in the face of her growing discontent with and even fear of George/David. How could she be so stupid and passive? Are we to believe that George/David was that mesmerizing and charismatic? That plotline seemed to go to pains to show her disillusionment, and then at the moment that you are itching for her to take off... she never does. The only reason she leaves with the money, ultimately, is that she has no CHOICE. That was not satisfying to me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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