Await Your Reply

(45) This was really gripping. Three intertwined stories of young people at a crossroads of sorts. Life not turning out the way they thought and escaping into other identities; into an underworld of identity theft rings and international computer hacking and embezzlement. I guess on the surface it sounds cheesy but it was really nicely done with some gravitas mixed in regarding the self, the occult, mental illness. What makes us who we are? Our name, our connections, our memories. . . ?

I flew through this in about 24 hours it was so engaging and one really wanted to figure out how the three stories would eventually connect. Each new parallel, or connection between the stories made one obsess (there was a lot about obsession in this show more book) regarding reading more and figuring things out. Anyone who ever had a sibling and an imagination could relate to Miles and Hayden's fantasy worlds and it was haunting to bear witness as he spun out of control. Chaon's depiction of schizophrenia I found to be very true to what I have seen as a physician.

Anyway, I have only ever read 'Ill Will' by Chaon which was good but not at this level. I am going to find the rest of his novels right now! show less

This novel tells three stories in alternating chapters, each of which begins with a car ride: A young man, bleeding badly, is being rushed to a hospital through the rural woods of Michigan. A nineteen-year-old girl, having just recently graduated high school, is running off to Nebraska with her former high school history teacher. And another man is driving through Canada in search of his long-missing twin brother, who might or might be not schizophrenic. At first, none of these stories appear to have much of anything to do with each other, but it becomes more and more apparent as the novel goes on that they are intimately tied together...

I enjoyed this a lot. It's got a corker of an opening, and it just keeps going from there, with the show more intriguing hints of connection between these three very different stories making for a puzzle whose answers creep up on you gradually in an interesting and satisfying way. It's also very well-written, with vivid characters and pages that just seem to fly by. If it weren't for annoying little things like sleep and work, I think I could easily have finished this in one sitting. show less

This novel turned out to be an extremely pleasant surprise. In part, it benefited in my reading from my recalling very little about it other than that I had added it to a "to read" list back when I read a review of it. The me of back then had okayed it, so the me of right now didn't need to revisit the review or even the book description. I got to experience the book in a way that is relatively rare: I didn't know much at all about it. I had no expectations.

It turns out, having no guide as to what is going on in this book is a big benefit, because it takes a long time for the threads of the three storylines to come come together. The structure of the book and the pace at which the plots develop, allow the reader to learn details when show more they will have the most effect. The echoes and bits of foreshadowing help bring into focus certain common notes between the concurrent narratives. The shifting points of view also provide insight. This is a book that rewards a reader's attention to detail.

With his focus on the problem of identity, Chaon seems to have much in common with Paul Auster, one of my favorite writers. Thankfully, he does not seem to want merely to go over the same ground as Auster, but to take on the slipperiness of identity in the context of our current hyperconnected world.

Finally, this book scores high on the matter of intrigue and plot as well, something that other, more purely meditative books don't always do. So therefore, in the words of Library Journal: Highly recommended. show less

Satisfyingly unsatisfactory... That was the first phrase that came to mind when I finished reading the last page.

It's well-written and pretty well plotted. There's a clear "aha" point in the story--the only problem is that I figured out the "aha" well before what it seems the author intended. Despite the early epiphany, it was still rather enjoyable to read, given the author's easy tone and engaging manner.

I won't give any direct spoilers, but I'll just say that the title is apt. The story leaves you wanting. Which is a good thing.

tells three stories that seem utterly unrelated for much of the book, so that I read Dan Chaon's book like I read a book of short stories; slowly, putting down the book between chapters, often for long stretches. Of course, this is a novel and the three different stories are each exciting and deal in some way with questions of identity and what it means to be lost. Ryan's a college student, but he's failing his classes and he's spent his tuition money, so when an uncle he'd heard about but never met shows up to tell him that he's his father, Ryan is ready to take off with his father for a cabin in Michigan without telling anyone. Lucy's parents died recently and she was living with her older sister while finishing high school. She falls show more in love with a teacher and they run away together to hide out in his childhood home in Nebraska. And Miles is always looking for his mentally unstable brother. He'll settle down somewhere, telling himself to forget Hayden and their shared past, but each time he receives a rare communication from his brother, he drops everything to try and find him again. This time it's a letter that draws him to the town of Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories.

For a stretch it doesn't seem possible to draw these different stories together, then they gradually reveal similarities and echoes of each other, until I could see a thread uniting them. For the last part of the book, the stories merged and parted, then united. Despite an intricate plot stretched from the tundra to Abidjan, Ivory Coast, the real strength of Await Your Reply is in the characters and how they relate to one another. How do we know who we are? If we assume another identity, are we the same person underneath? Which is quite a feat for a novel that features references to Lovecraft, a grisly mutilation, computer hacking and menacing Russians, among other things. show less

This novel switches between three stories that converge for a surprise ending.

Story #1: Miles Cheshire is searching for his twin brother, Hayden. It's a fruitless search, motivated by a combination of love and pity. Hayden is crazy - a schizophreniac. As a child, he was tormented by horrible nightmares that eventually crept into his waking existence. By the time he was a teenager, Hayden's sense of reality was terribly corrupted - he couldn't tell the difference between events as they happened and as he imagined them, on a personal and global level. Finally, Hayden was put in a mental institution - but he escaped, and Miles hasn't seen his brother since then, ten years earlier. Hayden sends Miles clues as to his whereabouts, and Miles show more always tries to use those clues to locate Hayden. But before he can track his brother down, Hayden slips out of reach. In AWAIT YOUR REPLY, Miles is driving north through Canada to the Arctic Circle. He knows that he's on another wild goose chase, that he probably won't find his brother, but he can't help but try.

Story #2: Ryan is failing out of college when he gets a phone call from his uncle Jay, who has some surprising news: Ryan isn't the biological child of his parents, as he'd always assumed. Jay says he is Ryan's real father, explaining that he got his girlfriend pregnant as a teenager but the girlfriend didn't want an abortion and wasn't ready to be a parent. Ryan ended up being raised by Jay's sister, who couldn't have children of her own. Jay thinks it's his duty to let Ryan know the truth, and Ryan, already at a crisis point, makes a radical decision: he drops out of college and moves to Michigan with Jay. Once in Michigan, he's quickly wrapped up in Jay's illegal money-making scheme, identity theft. When we meet Ryan, he's been with his father long enough for things to go terribly wrong - and Jay leaves Ryan to take the fall.

Story #3: Lucy is a brilliant senior in high school whose life is crumbling around her - her parents have died in a car crash, she's living with her older sister who can barely make ends meet for the two of them, and overconfidence leads her to apply to only three colleges: Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. When she's rejected from all three, Lucy doesn't know what to do - but her high school history teacher, George Orson, has an idea. He asks her to run away with him, he promises her a life of wealth and leisure, and Lucy decides it's the best option she has. But instead of international travel and luxury, Lucy finds herself living in a creepy, abandoned hotel with an increasingly distant George Orson. He assures her a bright future is just around the corner, but Lucy is increasingly aware that she's involving herself in a very, very bad situation.

AWAIT YOUR REPLY is a very clever novel, but it's also psychologically astute. The writing is good, the characters vivid and real. I was very surprised by the final reveal, but at the same time it seemed like it should have been obvious all along - I think this is a sign of a truly well crafted surprise ending. Worth the read. show less

This novel switches between three stories that converge for a surprise ending.

Story #1: Miles Cheshire is searching for his twin brother, Hayden. It's a fruitless search, motivated by a combination of love and pity. Hayden is crazy - a schizophreniac. As a child, he was tormented by horrible nightmares that eventually crept into his waking existence. By the time he was a teenager, Hayden's sense of reality was terribly corrupted - he couldn't tell the difference between events as they happened and as he imagined them, on a personal and global level. Finally, Hayden was put in a mental institution - but he escaped, and Miles hasn't seen his brother since then, ten years earlier. Hayden sends Miles clues as to his whereabouts, and Miles show more always tries to use those clues to locate Hayden. But before he can track his brother down, Hayden slips out of reach. In AWAIT YOUR REPLY, Miles is driving north through Canada to the Arctic Circle. He knows that he's on another wild goose chase, that he probably won't find his brother, but he can't help but try.

Story #2: Ryan is failing out of college when he gets a phone call from his uncle Jay, who has some surprising news: Ryan isn't the biological child of his parents, as he'd always assumed. Jay says he is Ryan's real father, explaining that he got his girlfriend pregnant as a teenager but the girlfriend didn't want an abortion and wasn't ready to be a parent. Ryan ended up being raised by Jay's sister, who couldn't have children of her own. Jay thinks it's his duty to let Ryan know the truth, and Ryan, already at a crisis point, makes a radical decision: he drops out of college and moves to Michigan with Jay. Once in Michigan, he's quickly wrapped up in Jay's illegal money-making scheme, identity theft. When we meet Ryan, he's been with his father long enough for things to go terribly wrong - and Jay leaves Ryan to take the fall.

Story #3: Lucy is a brilliant senior in high school whose life is crumbling around her - her parents have died in a car crash, she's living with her older sister who can barely make ends meet for the two of them, and overconfidence leads her to apply to only three colleges: Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. When she's rejected from all three, Lucy doesn't know what to do - but her high school history teacher, George Orson, has an idea. He asks her to run away with him, he promises her a life of wealth and leisure, and Lucy decides it's the best option she has. But instead of international travel and luxury, Lucy finds herself living in a creepy, abandoned hotel with an increasingly distant George Orson. He assures her a bright future is just around the corner, but Lucy is increasingly aware that she's involving herself in a very, very bad situation.

AWAIT YOUR REPLY is a very clever novel, but it's also psychologically astute. The writing is good, the characters vivid and real. I was very surprised by the final reveal, but at the same time it seemed like it should have been obvious all along - I think this is a sign of a truly well crafted surprise ending. Worth the read. show less