Await Your Reply

As soon as you read the opening pages you'll be hooked. Dan Chaon's intricately-plotted novel opens in the middle of the night with a father rushing his son to the hospital. "Listen to me, Son: You are not going to bleed to death." The son's hand is in a cooler on the front seat. Elsewhere in the night, freshly-minted, eighteen-year-old grad Lucy Lattimore has just surreptitiously left town with her former high-school history teacher, George Orson. They're making "a clean break" together. The final narrative strand is the story of Miles Cheshire and his--Dare I say it?--evil twin. Miles has been looking for his twin brother, Hayden, for more than a decade. As the novel opens, he's approaching the Arctic Circle in far northern Canada on this latest quest. What do these people have in common? All of them have huge mysteries in their lives. Many of them appear to be engaged in illegal activities. From the start, the reader knows that there are connections. They are tantalizingly close, but nothing in Chaon's novel is obvious, and revelations don't come easily. The author plays with time, like an artist playing with perspective, to further obfuscate connections. Not all of the stories are told in a linear manner. Meanwhile, the characters explore the very concept of identity. And so many questions are raised... Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Constantly while I read Await Your Reply, I kept thinking, How did he do this? He, being Dan Chaon, who has written a complexly-plotted and compulsively-readable thriller that is also a work of incredible literary beauty. Await Your Reply is an amazing accomplishment. You won't be able to put it down. Once you've followed all the trails and unraveled the last clues, you'll be blown away! What are you waiting for?

I don't like to be scared, but the first chapter hooked me, and then I just fell deeper and deeper in, lost in the maze of identities that Chaon so deftly intertwines, desperate to find how who each character really was, even though I knew that with Chaon, the concept of true identity is not a plot device but an existential quagmire. I finished reading this book in less than 48 hours despite the interruptions of two children, work, and a dinner party. Don't start it unless you're on a long plane ride or you're prepared to ignore others for the duration, because it simply will not let you rest. It's a smart, relentless, terrifying book, and there's nothing trashy, cheap, or derivative about it. The references to Frankenstein are particularly well done, and despite its brilliance as a thriller, it's the most eloquent book about alienation that I've ever read.

I thought Chaon's first novel, You Remind Me of Me, was great but this new book is fantastic. I don't want to tell too much about it because it has an aura of mystery that is best if you are clueless regarding the plot (I didn't even read the blurbs). At times the mystery was so convoluted I doubted Chaon could blend the various plots lines into one harmonious whole. But he pulls it off like a virtuoso. The sub-themes of identity and consciousness are there for those who enjoy a deeper meaning to their fiction. I do and feel that few combine powerful themes, great writing, and compelling storytelling like Chaon does. There is one gut-wrenching scene that is sketched within the first few pages and described briefly but vividly in later pages that some might find difficult. I thought the event was an appropriate jolt that energized the narrative and acted as a compelling question mark pulling me through the story. In other words, it was pretty violent but not gratuitous. Chaon actually shows a lot of restraint for a modern writer and his work is all the more powerful for his discipline. (Incidentally, Chaon's name is pronounced "Shawn" which I learned from the interview in the back of Fitting Ends, a great collection of short fiction).

Each of us, at some point in our lives, has been in a position where we "AWAIT YOUR REPLY". We seek approval, love or acceptance from a family member, a prospective employer, a college admissions office, or friends. We want to be loved and appreciated for who we are. We want to feel that acceptance either through word or deed, verbalized or on the written page. And so it goes with twins Miles and Hayden. Each is seeking a reply, a closure of sorts. This book is in some ways evocative of Wally Lamb's This Much I Know is True, in others it resembled Tom Tryon's The Other and there's a bit of Richard Russo and Patricia Highsmith thrown in for good measure. It is difficult to describe this unusual and gripping story without divulging vital plot points that would ruin this extraordinary reading experience. Suffice to say that author, DAN CHAON has a tale to tell and a writing style that hooks you from page one and keeps you spellbound as he deftly guides you through the strange and often hazardous exploits of several characters, Ryan, George, Lucy, Miles, Jay, and Hayden, whose lives, desires and relatively ordinary lives turn out to be strangely interconnected and definitely anything but ordinary. This is an unconventional book, probably unlike anything you've recently read. It explores a variety of subjects from schizophrenia to identity theft and will send lightning bolts of insight and pleasure through your imagination as it takes you on a magic carpet ride that extends from the plains of mid-America to the frozen tundra of the Arctic. AWAITING YOUR REPLY is awaiting readers who yearn for something different......and so......to quote an old TV commercial... Try It, You'll Like It.

Whoa, I really enjoyed this book. I started reading it this morning in between reading other books but all the other books got put aside as I had to see where this was going. It starts off with three different story lines that seemingly have absolutely nothing to do with each other. One story begins with a young man, Ryan, whose father assures him that he will not bleed to death as they rush to the emergency room with his severed arm in a styrofoam ice cooler. We later learn more about Ryan, he is Northwestern student who is failing all his classes and is undergoing an identity crisis of sorts when he discovers that the people he grew up with as his parents are actually his adoptive parents. Story number two is of Miles Cheshire who has spent most of his adult life looking for his brother Hayden who had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic when they were teens. But is he really? And finally we have the story of Lucy Lattimore who runs off after her high school graduation with her teacher George Orson. All these stories are seemingly removed and unconnected and I kept wondering what they had to do with each other. But each story is interesting on its on and that draws you in and keeps your reading. One of the most intelligent devices that the author employs is the fact that he never tells you the chronology of each story. You are never sure if the stories are taking place simultaneously, weeks/months apart or a few years apart. This makes for a very interesting story telling device as you try to find the connection between the characters. The author is also excellent in his descriptiveness. As the various characters make their way through America and beyond, you are caught up in their worlds and imagine what it must look like. From the decaying Cleveland suburbs, to the Bates motel like inn and accompanying house in Nebraska to the hustle and bustle of a busy African city, you find yourself lost in these worlds and their presence adds to a certain creepiness that permeates the whole story. I think that one of the most surprising things about this book is that despite the fact that there are mysterious and sinister events happening in this book, the book turns out to be more than just a thriller. At the center of these converging stories is the search for identity and the pursuit to reinvent oneself. As characters interact and intersect it becomes clear that many times you cannot escape yourself no matter how long it takes.