Await Your Reply
Dan Chaon, 2009
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780345476036
Summary
The lives of three strangers interconnect in unforeseen ways—and with unexpected consequences—in acclaimed author Dan Chaon’s gripping, brilliantly written 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. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1964
• Raised—Sidney, Nebraska, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Syracuse University
• Awards—Pushcart Prize; O'Henry Award; Academy Award in
Literature-The American Academy of Arts & Letters
• Currently—lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, USA
Dan Chaon (pronounced "Shawn") 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, 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. (From the publisher and Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Stunning…. Mr. Chaon succeeds in both creating suspense and making it pay off, but ‘Await Your Reply’ also does something even better. Like the finest of his storytelling heroes, Mr. Chaon manages to bridge the gap between literary and pulp fiction with a clever, insinuating book equally satisfying to fans of either genre. He does travel two roads, even though that guy David Frost said it wasn’t possible.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Readers be warned: Before sitting down with Dan Chaon's ambitious, gripping and unrelentingly bleak new novel, you might want to catch a "Seinfeld" rerun or two. Jerry and the gang's quips will be the last laugh-lines you'll get for a while…Chaon is a dark, provocative writer, and Await Your Reply is a dark, provocative book; in bringing its three strands together, Chaon has fashioned a braid out of barbed wire.
Lucinda Rosenfeld - New York Times Book Review
Here's what can be safely revealed about Await Your Reply: It contains three separate stories about people driving away from their homes, abandoning their lives and remaking themselves…Any one of these arresting plots could have sustained the entire book, but Chaon rotates through them chapter by chapter. Not only that, but the chronology of each story is jumbled so that the novel isn't so much cubed as Rubik's Cubed. I know that sounds like a literary headache, but these are engrossing, nerve-racking storylines that continually hand off to one another without breaking stride, leaving us as fascinated as we are disoriented…The result is a novel that succeeds as brilliantly as the short stories that have won him a National Book Award nomination, a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
(4 stars.) A deliciously disturbing literary thriller. In the end, Await Your Reply is a story that unfolds with chilling precision. You'll be spellbound from start to finish.
People
(Starred review.) Three disparate characters and their oddly interlocking lives propel this intricate novel about lost souls and hidden identities from National Book Award–finalist 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 debut—also a book of threes—even as it bests that book's elegant prose, haunting plot and knockout literary excellence.
Publishers Weekly
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. —Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal
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.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. “Hayden used to be obsessed with orphans,” Miles remembers in Chapter 16, and
it seems that Await Your Reply is full of characters who have lost one or both parents.
Why is the loss of a parent—being an orphan—of such interest to Hayden? How does it
fit in with the themes of the book?
2. Ch 16 Lydia Barrie “reinvent themselves speech.” Is identity truly more fluid than it
used to be? If so, why? What makes up a person’s identity? What holds us to a single
sense of self?
3. Is Miles’ loyalty to Hayden an admirable trait? How do issues of loyalty and betrayal
play out in the stories of the various main characters?
(Questions from author's website.)
Additional Questions from the publisher:
1. The structure of this novel is unconventional and complex, and each storyline echoes, intertwines, and plays off the others. How did the novel’s non-linear and fragmentary nature affect your understanding of the plot? How does the complicated, pixelated nature of the novel reflect the themes of identity in the novel?
2. Before they go looking for Hayden and Rachel, Lydia Barrie says to Miles, “What kind of person decides that they can throw everything away and—reinvent themselves? As if you could discard the parts of your life that you didn’t want anymore” (197). What do you think is the appeal of reinvention for Ryan, Lucy, and Hayden? What motivates each character to shed their original selves? Do you think it’s possible for people to “discard” unwanted aspects of themselves?
3. The novel continually circles around the notion of a soul, from Lucy’s assuming that George Orson has one, “though she didn’t know the soul’s real name” (223), to the Vladimir Nabokov epigraph at the beginning of part two: “…the soul is but a manner of being…any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its undulations” (93). What do you make of these two conflicting ideas? In the world of the novel, where identities are constantly shifting and dissolving, do souls remain unscathed and whole? Why do we rely on this concept of “the soul”? How does it allow us to understand ourselves and others around us?
4. During Ryan’s tenure with Jay, he muses on how the identities he inhabits are like “shells…hollow skins that you stepped into and that began to solidify over time…They began to take on a life of their own, developed substance” (103). How do we see this come true in the novel? What makes the characters in the novel real or unreal? Is it true that “You could be anyone” (297), as Ryan later tells himself?
5. In chapter 10, the narrative addresses the reader: “…you are aware of your life as a continuous thread, a dependable unfolding story that you tell yourself…You are still you, after all, through all of these hours and days; you are still whole” (88-89). Is this how you conceive or yourself? Has this book affected how you perceive yourself and your identity? How did you interpret this second-person chapter?
6. While Miles never changes his identity, he does attempt to reinvent himself to some degree when he moves back to Cleveland. Why do you think Miles is unable to continue with this new, stable life? What propels his obsession with Hayden? Do you think at the end of the novel Miles is truly finished with his journey—has he accepted the “ending” (289) Hayden has offered him?
7. Do you think anyone in the novel is able to connect with another person? Is there a real connection between Lucy and George Orson, for instance, despite the unreality of his identity? What about between Hayden and Miles? Ryan and Jay? Is authenticity and honesty a requirement for human intimacy?
8. Dan Chaon once said, “I have always thought of myself as a kind of ghost-story/horror writer, though most of the time the supernatural never actually appears on stage.” Does this ring true for Await Your Reply? The novel is billed as literary fiction with the suspense of a thriller, and echoes of horror and gothic fiction. Where did you notice this playfulness with genre? Did it remind you of anything you’ve read in the past?
9. Eadem mutate resurgo: “Although changed, I shall arise the same. This is the Latin phrase that Hayden includes in his memorial at Banks Island, and which he reflects on in the last chapter. What do you think this phrase ultimately says about Hayden and his actions?
10. At what point where you able to put these storylines together, to understand what had happened? How did your understanding of the events shift as you read further? Did you believe something early on that did or didn’t come to fruition?
top of page (summary)