Await Your Reply: A Novel (Google eBook)

Dan Chaon

Random House Digital, Inc., Aug 25, 2009 - Fiction - 256 pages

BONUS: This edition contains an Await Your Reply discussion guide.

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.

What people are saying

Review: Await Your Reply

User Review  - Stefanie Eye - Goodreads

I enjoyed the author's exploration of the concept of identity, but I found that the theme was so pronounced, it's all you notice of the story. Some of the characterizations fell short, and I didn't ...

Review: Await Your Reply

User Review  - Stefanie - Goodreads

I enjoyed the author's exploration of the concept of identity, but I found that the theme was so pronounced, it's all you notice of the story. Some of the characterizations fell short, and I didn't ...

Contents

• Section 1: 2
• Section 2: 3
• Section 3: 5
• Section 4: 13
• Section 5: 16
• Section 6: 27
• Section 7: 42
• Section 8: 55
• Section 9: 68
• Section 10: 88
• Section 11: 93
• Section 12: 94
• Section 13: 108
• Section 14: 129
• Section 15: 152
• Section 16: 173
• Section 17: 187
• Section 18: 200
• Section 19: 213
• Section 20: 226
• Section 21: 241
• Section 22: 253
• Section 23: 266
• Section 24: 276
• Section 25: 290
• Section 26: 298
• Section 27: 321

About the author

Dan Chaon is the acclaimed author of Among the Missing, 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 The Best American Short Stories, 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.


From the Hardcover edition.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Await Your Reply: A Novel
• Author: Dan Chaon
• Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc., 2009
• ISBN: 0345517024, 9780345517029
• Length: 256 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General