Dan Chaon

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A playfully macabre and utterly thrilling tale about orphaned twins on the run from their murderous uncle who find refuge in a bizarre traveling carnival, from master of literary horror Dan Chaon.

It’s 1915 and the world is transforming, but for thirteen-year-old Bolt and Eleanor—twins so close they can literally read each other’s minds—life is falling apart. When their mother dies, they are forced to leave home under the care of a vicious con show more man who claims to be their long-lost uncle Charlie, the only kin they have left. During a late-night poker game, when one of his rages ends in murder, they decide to flee.

Salvation arrives in the form of Mr. Jengling, founder of the Emporium of Wonders and father to its many members. He adopts Bolt and Eleanor, who travel by train across the vast, sometimes brutal American frontier with their new family, watching as the exhibitions spark amazement wherever they go. There’s Minnie, the three-legged lady, and Dr. Chui, who stands over seven feet tall; Thistle Britches, the clown with no nose, and Rosalie, who can foretell the death of anyone she meets.

After a lifetime of having only each other, Eleanor and Bolt are finally part of something bigger. But as Bolt falls in deeper with their new clan, he finds Eleanor pulling further away from him. And when Uncle Charlie picks up their trail, the twins find themselves facing a peril as strange as it is terrifying, one which will forever alter the trajectory of their lives. An ode to the misfits and the marginalized, One of Us is a riotous and singularly creepy celebration of the strange and the spectacular and of family in its many forms.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: The dinner-party scene of Tod Browning's super unsettling 1932 film Freaks, only literatured to a fare-thee-well. It feels a little like those Victorian table skirts meant to keep the ladies ladylike and not inflamed with lust by...no one's ever been able to explain to me why women were supposed to be inflamed by a lathe-turned leg not a well-turned calf or a muscular thigh.

What stands out to me in this read is the appalling nastiness of the carnival/family unit's audiences, gawking at people for being different. Those different, often very different, people are Author Chaon's focus to the exclusion of more than...I would say "desultory" but it's so pejorative...unhurried action for half or more of the book. What that allows for is the kind of horror I most enjoy to build. There are no Big Scary Monsters or weird, spooky Happenings...there are people, not ruled by logic, being unpredictable and unnervingly cruel; there are the twins at the heart of the tale learning about and deploying their own difference as defense against ugly human greed. The consequences of that ugly human greed are what ultimately drive them, in despairing desperation, to run from their lives.

Ironically they run into their lives, their purpose, by doing this. Their place, their home, their haven. Like all havens, though, there are shadows. These shadows menace everyone in their found family. Eleanor can't really settle in among the freaks, feels herself different even among the different; Bolt has found his place, made his home, aligned with these freakshow folk to stand against the uneasy-making shadow of...whatever. It is always hard to see someone who's been part of you since you've had memories move away from your perspective, so Eleanor's struggles felt real and immediate to me, even while Bolt's sinking-in to the seductive group embrace we call "family" made all the sense in the world. He can finally feel that someone has his six.

The ending scenes of this book resolve the tensions that need resolution, while never being unfaithful to the creeping dread, the human-driven horror (with violence as its salt and pepper) that pervades the read. "Uncle" Charlie is just not going away with all he represents in the twins' lives (and the world at large they must navigate as Others); the release from threat dissipates some tension, but the World is still there...for me this was more the strange and spooky Carnivàle than the broader, flatter American Horror Story.

I found the author's note particularly enjoyable to read. Author Chaon delves a bit into some details of the inspirations for his story. It's a pleasure to have because I was thinking as I read the tale, "is this...did he...am I seeing...?" a lot. It ended up taking me from "this is a mixtape" to "how wonderful to have a creative mind that's inspired by so much."

I can't fill out that fifth star because I felt "Uncle" Charlie was, ironically enough, underplayed. His villainy was so thoroughgoing, ham it up even more, add a po-mo touch of self-aware baroque Javert-ness. As it is, he takes a lot of emotional real estate up with rather a flat affect.

Also either make the book a little longer (my choice) or move up the twins' running away sooner. A little too unbalanced; therefore feels rushed in that last third. But folks, this pleasure of a read very much deserves a shot at your TBR for #Deathtober! show less

I'm not sure how to feel about this book. I couldn't put it down, and rate it very high on the page turning scale. The characters, plot and technique were complex and sometimes confusing, but never failed to hold my interest. There are some unusual writing techniques I have not encountered before, especially the columned pages, but I found they added to the story and character development. I needed to know who done it, although I guessed, but could not have foreseen the ending, or how much show more the disturbing story would stay with me days after I finished it . This is a book to share and talk about with friends and book clubs - a gripping and nerve wracking psychological thriller with deeply flawed but mostly sympathetic characters. I recommend it highly, with the caveat that you probably won't like how it ends. show less

This is a different kind of apocalypse. There are actually two apocalypses going on. One is a slow motion decline of civilized America. I’ll come back to that one, because I think it’s a really interesting, kind of subtle depiction.

The other is the breakdown of Billy’s accustomed, if not all that comfortable, life. Billy, who may not even have a real name (he likes to think of himself as the “Barely Blur”), is as invisible, unattached, and impermanent as anyone can get and still show more live in a world of other people and things. He makes his living traveling around in a motor home called the Guide Star, doing nefarious odd jobs, mainly for an even more nefarious “businessman” named Tim Ribbons.

Billy is not just invisible and unattached, he’s amoral. He’s killed his own mother. Not without cause, but he killed her. The odd jobs he takes on aren’t much better, delivering disloyal minions for mob boss punishment, delivering a newborn from who knows what origin to who knows what fate, and other sordid tasks. To build any sympathy for Billy is a task in itself, requiring, for me anyway, keeping in mind that he’s a character not a person and that he’s a character in this particular story of collapsing, crumbling order and morality.

That collapse is interesting because it’s happening in slow motion, the way a true breakdown of civilization may happen. It’s pretty much just an extreme version of now, with wealth so concentrated in the hands of the conscienceless that there are no longer any prevailing standards of reasonableness or decency to fall back on. There are no limits on exploitation, or on environmental and social destruction. It’s coming down a little at a time, and really Billy is just another figure finding his way in the rising sludge.

Another interesting, although I couldn’t say entirely original, aspect of the story, is Billy’s loyalty, mainly to his dog Flip, and his sentimentality despite his amorality. This gets us into the plot.

Billy is a master of anonymity. He has no real name, no social security number, he may not even exist in any official sense. He keeps a periodically refreshed collection of burner phones to connect to his employer and his one friend, who i will mention later. Without a phone number or any other identifying data, he’s got a virtual invisibility cloak.

But someone finds him — Cammie turns up as a voice on his burner phones. She says she’s his daughter. Billy at one time made some money as a sperm donor. Cammie claims to be one of his progeny, and she’s found that he has as many as 167 progeny, all perhaps the result of some bigger plot involving one of those wealthy unconstrained types, a cult figure with bizarre interests and aims.

Billy doesn’t know if he can trust Cammie to be who she says he is, to be telling him the truth, or to know the truth in the first place. Experanza. his one friend from childhood, advises him that Cammie’s not to be trusted, but Billy doesn’t even really know what his true relation to Experanza is or whether he can trust her either.

All in a world where drones and CCTV cameras are watching everywhere, and you can’t be sure who is on the other end of the feed.

It all culminates in a chase across the northern plains, Billy stealing cars or whatever he can find to get himself across the border where Cammie may be leading him to a safe haven. His pursuers could be from the cult or could be from Tim Ribbins, towards whom Billy has fallen into a gray area of betrayal.

it took me a while to engage with the story. Maybe because Billy is just south of likable, or identifiable? But I did, about halfway through, as the unknowns became more and more intriguing and comfortable at the same time.

i will say one thing about the ending. Flip, the dog, doesn’t die. i always want to know that the dog doesn’t die before i start a story. Hope that helps. show less

Another little oddity with a lot going for it, but it’s not perfect. I’ll start with what worked for me. First was Billy or Barely Blur as he sometimes calls himself. A man with more names than years to his life, Billy is a road warrior assassin, cleaner, kidnapper, arsonist - whatever awful job his employers need done. With him travels Flip, a rescued pitbull fighting dog (leftover from one of said jobs). They have a nicely appointed RV with homey touches and the name Guiding Star. show more Besides Flip, Experanza is his only friend. She lives in a model McMansion in a development that never materialized and has been left to rot. He has almost as many burner phones as he does names and microdoses with LSD daily to keep on an even keel. His mysterious past will unfold for you, but only so far.

Out of the blue, on one of those many burners, he gets a call from a woman claiming to be his daughter and she uses his earliest of aliases. But how did she know? How did she track him down? And when he muses that she probably knows more about him than he does himself, we are introduced to his mental instability, breakdown and time in a psychiatric hospital - pretty much all of which he doesn’t remember. He’s alarmed, but not unduly and turns to Experanza for advice - “If it were me, I would try to gain her trust and find her location and then you can go there and kill her.”

In time we come to understand that Cammie, this daughter, is only one of over 100 children conceived from his sperm donation days when a young junkie, dealer and confessed matricide. Between his mental lapses, life of crime, shady employers and intrusive future tech, it’s a pretty bleak landscape we tread and a decent mystery to keep us going.

He keeps talking to Cammie when she calls (it’s only one way), she’s got his mother’s laugh and drops enough information about him and his 167 children to keep him hooked. But then he gets orders to find and kill her. She’s a threat to…something. We’re not sure what and neither is he. But the fact that she’s a run-away adoptee and has cut off her own foot to remove embedded trackers, it’s serious. Just who is Tim Ribbons and the Value Standard Corporation? Is he really Billy’s legal guardian? How about the L. Ron Hubbardesque Brayden Kurch and his best selling book Transhumanist Séance? How does he relate to Harland Jengling and the Temple of the True Science? Didn’t his mother once mention going to a rich man’s charitable foundation and then coming away pregnant? How about Patches St. Germain, old roommate, fellow petty criminal, and present day doctor? Why does he live in a walled compound with a chimpanzee named Ward? Is Cammie one or many?

In the end you’ll have a lot of action and most of those questions answered, but the solution is still somewhat opaque and I wanted a bit more clarity in the connections. The writing is top notch if a bit jargony in terms of the near-future setting of the book. Nothing too difficult to figure out though. On page 195 Billy thinks “The idea gives me the fantods.” - Thanks for reminding me of that word, Dan. Sweet. Oh and those things poking up by the cypresses aren’t roots, they’re knees! show less