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)
Publication Year: 2009
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0I spent most of 'Await Your Reply' trying to figure out what was going on.
For plenty of novels, like detective novels, that's the whole point. For this novel, it was an unwelcome distraction. Author Dan Chaon arranges this novel as a number of disparate, though related, threads that all come together on the last page. They're supposed to come together with the kind of bang that creates, in the reader, a sense of enlightenment and discovery. For this reader, they merely led to a sense of frustration.
See, Chaon's prose style isn't particularly beautiful. It's workmanlike, sure, but not intrinsically rewarding. By leaping from perspective to perspective, place to place, his plot never got its hooks into me; I spent more time trying to solve the puzzle of Chaon's story construction than losing myself in his narrative. Chaon created no goodwill with his prose. He created no goodwill with his plot. He created only a question, for this reader, of how his novel garnered such positive reviews.
Recommended for: no one.
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