Await Your Reply
Ratings13
Average rating3.7
15
Ratings13
Average rating3.7
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.
(jacket)
Reviews with the most likes.
This is a story of three seemingly unconnected threads, but of course why are they in the same book if they have no connection? So you know that something will bring the threads together, but in order for this to be an awesome book, the connection between the threads would have to create a sum larger than its parts. And it doesn't.
The themes of reinventing oneself, while not inherently boring to me, weren't exactly engaging to me as presented here.
On the other hand, the writing is solid and well-crafted, so I made it to the end. Some of the descriptions are still with me, and the characters were plausible and served their purposes.
Imagine a mystery, but a mystery written by the author of literary fiction. That mystery is Await Your Reply.
Three stories are told in this book. All three are the stories of identity, who a person is, who others think the person is, and the confusions of identity.
I really enjoyed this one! Three seemingly unrelated stories that each take the reader on a journey of mystery, pain, sadness, but there is always something you can't quite put your finger on. Brilliantly written and with a conclusion that will leave you wanting to read the book again and again, I can't recommend this one enough!
