Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

August Book Club Pick

Publishers Weekly (06/08/2009):
Three disparate characters and their oddly interlocking lives propel this intricate novel about lost souls and hidden identities from National Book Awardfinalist Chaon (“You Remind Me of Me”). Eighteen-year-old Lucy Lattimore, her parents dead, flees her stifling hometown with charismatic high school teacher George Orson, soon to find herself enmeshed in a dangerous embezzling scheme. Meanwhile, Miles Chesire is searching for his unstable twin brother, Hayden, a man with many personas who’s been missing for 10 years and is possibly responsible for the house fire that killed their mother. Ryan Schuyler is running identity-theft scams for his birth father, Jay Kozelek, after dropping out of college to reconnect with him, dazed and confused after learning he was raised thinking his father was his uncle. Chaon deftly intertwines a trio of story lines, showcasing his characters’ individuality by threading subtle connections between and among them with effortless finesse, all the while invoking the complexities of what’s real and what’s fake with mesmerizing brilliance. This novel’s structure echoes that of his well-received debutalso a book of threeseven as it bests that book’s elegant prose, haunting plot and knockout literary excellence. “(Sept.)” Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal (06/15/2009):
Miles Cheshire is driving from Cleveland to Alaska in search of his disturbed twin brother, Hayden, another leg of a crusade that has consumed him for more than a decade. Ryan Schuyler is 19 when he discovers that he is adopted and his real father, a con man who deals in fraud and identity theft, now wants Ryan to live with him. Orphaned Lucy Lattimore leaves town with her former high school history teacher when his dreams of riches and travel fill the hole in her life. This chillingly harsh work by Chaon (“You Remind Me of Me”) will make you question your own identity and sense of time. His characters live on the outskirts of society, even of their own lives. Yet we are compelled to read about them, driven to see it through. VERDICT This novel is unrelenting, like the scene of an accident: we are repulsed by the blood, but we cannot look away. For fans of pulse-pounding drama, Chaon never fails to impress. (With an eight-city tour; library marketing.) [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 5/1/09.]Bette-Lee Fox, “Library Journal” Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Review – Adult (07/01/2009):
A sprinter who excels at the 100-yard dash may never attempt a marathon. A poet who composes haiku might not be able to sustain an epic. Though writers of short stories are almost invariably encouraged to become novelists—a contract for a debut story collection is typically a bet hedged against the longer work to come—some authors who master the former don't seem as well suited to the latter. Maybe it's a question of scope, or even artistic stamina, but the novel requires a different mindset. It isn't just a longer story.

Ohio's Dan Chaon, whose two collections established him as one of America's most promising short story writers, returns this fall with a second novel, Await Your Reply, easily his most ambitious work to date. As in his stories and previous novel (You Remind Me of Me, 2004), this book focuses on family dynamics, the quest for identity and the essence of the Heartland—in some ways, Chaon is to the Midwest what Richard Russo is to the Northeast—but the structure has an innovative audacity missing from his earlier, more straightforward work.

The novel initially seems to be three separate narratives, presented in round-robin fashion, connected only by some plot similarities (characters on a quest or on the lam, a tragic loss of parents) and thematic underpinnings (the chimera of identity). One narrative concerns a college dropout who learns that the man he thought was his uncle is really his father, who recruits him for some criminal activity involving identity theft. The second involves an orphan who runs away with her high-school history teacher. The third features a twin in his 30s in search of his brother, likely a paranoid schizophrenic who occasionally sends messages yet refuses to be found.

It's a tribute to Chaon's narrative command that each of these parallel narratives sustains the reader's interest, even though there's little indication through two-thirds of the novel that these stories will ever intersect. And when they do, the results are so breathtaking in their inevitability that the reader practically feels compelled to start the novel anew, just to discover the cues that he's missed along the way.

The novel and the short story each aspire to a different kind of perfection. We think no less of Alice Munro because she reigns supreme in the shorter form (though her short stories are longer than most). We continue to hail William Trevor and Lorrie Moore primarily for the exquisiteness of their stories, though both have attempted novels as well (shorter than many). More recently, Donald Ray Pollock's hard-hitting Knockemstiff, a debut collection of interrelated stories, could have easily been marketed as a novel. And Aleksander Hemon's return to stories with Love and Obstacles could pass as a follow-up novel to his brilliant The Lazarus Project. With Chaon, one senses that there's no going back. His stories established his early reputation. He did that. Now he's doing this.(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Publisher Marketing:
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.

Review Citations:

• Entertainment Weekly 09/04/2009 pg. 65 (EAN 9780345476029, Hardcover)
• Entertainment Weekly 12/25/2009 pg. 110 (EAN 9780345476029, Hardcover)
• Kirkus Best Books 12/15/2009 pg. 4 (EAN 9780345476029, Hardcover)
• Kirkus Review – Adult 07/01/2009 (EAN 9780345476029, Hardcover)
• Library Journal Prepub Alert 05/01/2009 pg. 58 (EAN 9780345476029, Hardcover)
• Library Journal 06/15/2009 pg. 59 (EAN 9780345476029, Hardcover)
• NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/06/2009 pg. 20 (EAN 9780345476029, Hardcover)
• New York Times Book Review 08/23/2009 pg. 17 (EAN 9780345476029, Hardcover)
• New York Times Book Review 08/30/2009 pg. 18 (EAN 9780345476029, Hardcover)
• People Weekly 08/31/2009 pg. 47 (EAN 9780345476029, Hardcover)
• Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/02/2009 pg. 22 (EAN 9780345476029, Hardcover) – *Starred Review
• Publishers Weekly 06/08/2009 pg. 1 (EAN 9780345476029, Hardcover) – *Starred Review
• Entertainment Weekly 06/04/2010 pg. 124 (EAN 9780345476036, Paperback)
• Audio File 03/01/2010 pg. 34 (EAN 9781597772778, Compact Disc)

Contributor Bio:  Chaon, Dan
Dan Chaon is the acclaimed author of” Fitting Ends “and “Among the Missing,” a finalist for the National Book Award, which was also listed as one of the ten best books of the year by the American Library Association, “Chicago Tribune,” “The Boston Globe,” and “Entertainment Weekly,” as well as being cited as a “New York Times” Notable Book. Chaon’s fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and won both Pushcart” “and O. Henry awards. Chaon teaches at Oberlin College and lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, with his wife and two sons.