Await Your Reply Pdf Summary
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.
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Await Your Reply Review
TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE VOICE
5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing is as it seems!
Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2022
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Dan Chaon’s “Await Your Reply” was published in 2009, but I’m just now getting to it…better late than never! I hadn’t read much Chaon until his “Sleepwalk” earlier this year, which I loved, so I’m happily continuing to read his back list!
The novel starts with a severed hand! How gripping (pun intended) is that?
Chaon weaves three narratives in this witty thriller. We know these characters are connected – but HOW?
Chaon weaves themes of identity (e.g., identity theft, changing identities, people who aren’t what they seem, etc.) as he ramps up the suspense in unfolding this neat mystery.
Nothing is as it seems! I loved it!
5.0 out of 5 stars An oustanding achievement in the field of excellence
Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2010
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On its surface, Dan Chaon’s “Await Your Reply” concerns the hot-button issue of identity theft, but those looking for a breakdown of the mechanics of stealing someone’s identity would be best served to look elsewhere. Instead, Chaon seems more intent on exploring the question of whether an identity can be stolen when it can’t even be said to properly exist in the first place. In Chaon’s hands, identity is an elusive and illusory concept, certainly nowhere near as easily defined as a name or a family history, and able to be exchanged at pretty much any time if it becomes too binding. Mixing its personal storytelling with boatloads of existential angst, the book is part character study, part profound musing on the nature of identity and the way we define ourselves, and compulsively readable whatever its focus.
Chaon’s writing doesn’t exactly place a great deal of emphasis on narrative drive, tending to move things along at a relaxed pace marked by frequent digressions to develop his protagonists’ backstories while examining the inner workings of their minds. At the same time, his psychological insights are always interesting, and while the overall worldview of the book is generally bleak and unsentimental it never comes at the expense of plausibility. “Await Your Reply” is certainly one of the most naturalistic novels I’ve come across in a long time, with straightforward prose complemented by a near-total absence of histrionic dialogue and contrived plot twists. There is a mystery to be developed here, but it’s done more through subtle cues that fit neatly in the narrative than through stunning, out-of-left-field revelations.
The book splits its time evenly between three seemingly unrelated plots centering around decidedly ordinary characters–a working-class high-school valedictorian from Ohio who’s skipped town with her former history teacher; a college student who takes up residence with his long-lost ID-thief father; and a magic-store employee caught up in an endless, wide-ranging search for his disturbed twin brother. None of the characters seem to live life according to any sort of well-defined goal or plan, instead just sort of floating rootless through a world on the fringes of proper society, where the connections that typically sustain us–family, friends, community–have less meaning than the realities of getting by from one day to the next. While the paths of the principal characters never cross, the connection between the three storylines isn’t exactly kept a secret, so the revelations that tie all the threads together can’t really be called twists in the vein of something you’d see in a Chuck Palahniuk novel. Reading this book occasionally gave me the feeling of trying to solve a puzzle, but the depth of the characterizations and the emphasis on subtlety and realism elevates it way above the level of a simple whodunit or intellectual exercise.
For a book where not a great deal happens, “Await Your Reply” does manage to generate a great deal of suspense as the situations of its characters become increasingly desperate, which only adds to its overall mood of alienation and deception. It’s incredibly easy to get drawn into Chaon’s world, to the extent that this book became (for me at least) a bit of an obsession by the time I was finished. “Await Your Reply” may not be a conventional mystery, but it still manages to be a first-class page-turner.
4.0 out of 5 stars Book Club Pick
Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2012
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Reading Await Your Reply has taken me back to the time when I was a teenager and I wanted to run away from home; To the time I thought I was in love with a high school professor and wanted to runaway with him somewhere paradise-like; To the time as a grown up I wanted to run out of work and never return. I am so glad I never had the guts to do any of them, because the characters in the book did have the courage to follow their fantasies and they got screwed!
In short: This Book Will Mess With Your Head
…and to be perfectly honest I liked it!
Ok, So now lets get to the summary and review.
Await Your Reply has three story lines. One is the story of Miles who has a twin schizophrenic brother named Hayden, who is hiding out somewhere in the US. Miles decides to leave his job and go on a spontaneous cross country journey to find Hayden.
The Second story is Lucy and George Orson. Lucy is a teenager with a messed up family. George Orson is Lucy’s handsome high school teacher with an Ivy League education and what looks like a glamorous life (he drives a Maserati). They fall in love and George Orson promises a life full of riches if they run away together.
The Third story is Ryan and Jay. Jay is Ryan’s birth father but he let his sister adopt Ryan since she had a stable home with her husband. When Ryan is eighteen he receives a letter from “uncle” Jay telling him the truth about his adoption and offers Ryan to come live with him. Ryan leaves Northerwestern University, where he was attending college. His shady new lifestyle with Jay requires him to have different names and identities.
In the end these stories will somehow relate, and when you are reading it and you make the connection you will suddenly hear yourself say “Oh My God I KNEW IT!!!”
Its kind of hard to review this book without giving up spoilers, and I refuse to spoil such an amazing book for anyone. I will, however, know that if you read this book you will be as intrigued with identity and life as I am now! Do me a favor and ask yourself if you would want to be someone else after reading this book.
I don’t want to be anyone else, if I screw up as me, I want to make it up, get back on track and keep living my life as me.
P.S- I know this sounds delirious if you haven’t read the book, but it will make sense after you read it… I promise.
About Dan Chaon Author Of Await Your Reply pdf Book
Dan Chaon is the Author Of Await Your Reply pdf Book, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and You Remind Me of Me, which was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, and Entertainment Weekly, among other publications. Chaon’s fiction has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction, and he was the recipient of the 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Chaon lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and teaches at Oberlin College, where he is the Pauline M. Delaney Professor of Creative Writing. His new novel, Await Your Reply, will be published in late August 2009.
Await Your Reply pdf, Paperback, Hardcover Book Information
- Publisher : Ballantine Books (August 25, 2009)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 324 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0345476026
- ISBN-13 : 978-0345476029
- Item Weight : 1.32 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,450,297 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #12,734 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
- #18,555 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #64,826 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews: 3.8 out of 5 stars 390 ratings
Get A Copy Of Await Your Reply pdf Or Paperback By Dan Chaon
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