Among the Missing
Copyright © 2002
by Dan Chaon
Ballantine
How to Buy
|
In this haunting, bracing new collection, Dan Chaon shares stories of men,
women, and children who live far outside the American Dream, while
wondering which decision, which path, or which accident brought them to
this place. Chaon imagines today's family instinctively trying to stay
together, only to find itself lost in the throes of a chaotic, modern
world.
In "Safety Man," a young widow and her children become increasingly
attached to an inflatable protector-doll, as the world outside seems to
grow ever more threatening; "Big Me" follows a lonely, imaginative
twelve-year-old boy who believes an older (slightly creepier) version of
himself has moved in next door; In "I Demand to Know Where You're Taking
Me," a man blinded by love for his imprisoned brother ignores the warnings
of his distant wife and a talking parrot who both witness things he's
never seen; and "Among the Missing" explores how the death of a family,
found buckled in their car at the bottom of a lake, casts a shadow on a
small town and intrudes upon the narrator's relationship with his aging
mother.
A writer of enormous talent and emotional depth, Dan Chaon mines the
psychological landscape of his characters to dazzling effect. Each story
radiates with sharp humor, mystery, wonder, and startling compassion.
Among the Missing lingers in the mind through its subtle grace and
power
of language. — from the jacket
One of the best short story writers around. ... Dan Chaon’s stories are funny,
heartbreaking, beautifully written, and intelligently conceived. — Lorrie Moore
An important collection of stories, a genuinely literary accomplishment. — Ha Jin
With a story like [‘Big Me’] from the marvelous writer Dan Chaon, I am confronted
not only with an unfathomable mystery such as that of the endurance of a single
human identity over time, but also with new proof of the enduring value of telling
tales in the ongoing struggle to understand those mysteries. — Michael Chabon
In the 12 quietly accomplished stories of his second
collection,
Chaon explores the complicated geography of human relationships, from the
unintentional failures and minute betrayals of daily existence to the
numbing grief caused by abandonment, disappearance or death. —
Publishers Weekly
People go missing both literally and figuratively in Chaon's beautiful and
insightful stories, most of which are set in small, muffled Midwest towns. —
Chicago Tribune
"A major talent." — New York Newsday
Chaon is the rare writer who deserves comparison to [Raymond]
Carver: both write an affectless prose that takes on a surprisingly
emotional life of its own. — Claire Dederer, Amazon.com
Chaon succeeds brilliantly in suggesting the immensity and mystery floating silently
below the surface of everyday life, shadowy compressions of all the complicated
and contradictory thoughts and feelings that humans conceal from each other out
of fear and love. — Booklist
In his splendid second collection of short stories, the past always remains a huge presence.
Chaon's
contemporary stories intimately reveal modern life and the secrets people keep. —
Library Journal
Twelve new fictions, notable for their stylistic grace and captivating selection of incident.
.... Here, dreams
do not waft up out of idle enchantments and lazy afternoons; they struggle forth, life rafts
offering rescue to
mauled and sinking adults, usually in their 30s, who recall the genesis of their dreaming in
troubled
childhoods. ... Chaon's work is especially notable for his casually precise prose and deep
intelligence
for the resonant scene. A gem of a second collection from an immensely promising writer of
unmistakably
original — and distinctively rewarding — literary gifts. — Kirkus Reviews
Chaon's prose is unassuming yet precise. He avoids stylistic
tics and experimental writing in favor of important stories,
well told. His landscapes are Midwestern; his characters are
Midwesterners, down to earth and leery of causing scenes. In
the hands of a lesser writer they might become caricatures,
but Chaon's compassion and understanding result in credible,
three-dimensional
human beings. — Amy Knox Brown, The Missouri Review
Riveting … Harvey Grossinger, Houston Chronicle
Twelve stories — filled with compassion, sensitivity and a quirky brand of humor
— so pleasurable
to read. — Washington Post Book World
Dan Chaon knows things. As evidenced by his second short-story collection,
Among the Missing,
he’s one of those writers who possess an uncanny and seemingly otherworldly
understanding of the human
condition and the world of muted emotions. These 12 stories further establish
Chaon as a remarkable
chronicler of a very American kind of sadness, much in the tradition of Richard Yates,
Raymond Carver and Denis Johnson.
These stories are to be savored despite, and perhaps because of, their unrelenting
bleakness. Like the blues, they have a cathartic quality: You might feel worse but
then you feel better. And
then you want to read them again. — San Francisco Chronicle
Chaon's work achieves a blend of tenderness and slate-black melancholy: family suicides and
boozy fathers
and a boy protagonist who invents imaginary hometowns to make the real one recede a little.
These stories
tell you the bad news first and then let you find your own way out of the cave. They also
contain an elegance
of form — shifting narrative perspectives and clean, brutal language — that
accumulates into
something splendidly trustworthy. By the end of Among the Missing,' you believe
in the ache at their
center, and that simple confidence softens the blow a bit. — Boston Globe
What makes these characters (and their stories) rise above
the ordinary is Chaon's willingness to do justice to their inherently
comic nature and fate while, at the same time, treating them with
exquisite compassion. This is storytelling of a very high order.
— The Nebraska Center for the Book News
|
Fitting Ends
Copyright © 2003
by Dan Chaon
Ballantine
How to Buy
|
Hap, that is, chance, swings through the lives of these characters like a
wrecking ball. Death, disease, mental illness have already truncated most
of the families here before we begin reading. The repetitive rituals of
guilt, bitterness and recrimination that operate in the happiest of families
are, in Chaon's suffering heartland, relentless, compulsive and deadly. And
those who suffer most are the lost adolescents who tilt and teeter through
these domestic minefields as if the flat landscape is unreeling beneath
them. The pathos of their attempt to wish their families and themselves
back to health is piercing: "He had a fantasy, back then, that if he could
somehow trap his father in a room for a week without alcohol, that he'd be
cured." "I tried not to be afraid of the city. I tried to believe the world
was a gentle place." "He liked to imagine her [an absent mother] as someone
with quick things to say, a party-giver. Perhaps she was known for
her moods." — Boston Book Review
Often, these characters share the feeling that having made mistakes, their
only sensible course is to make even more mistakes — and even bigger
ones. In "Rapid Transit," a man who steals his boss's coat later mugs the
boss in an alley, using the coat as a weapon. In "Ultrasound," a man who
discards his wife's personal belongings asks to be hypnotized in her
presence, knowing he'll reveal "how ugly...how empty he was at his center."
— New York Times
Chaon's stories are about families, and the characters in these stories stare into the white
hot center of these families and tell what they see. ... Clouds and ghosts hover over and
around these families. What has already come to pass is often dark (a brother's death, a
mother's institutionalization, a car wreck, etc.). The present is usually gray, and the
future is as ominous and threatening as the storm depicted on the book's cover, approaching
across rolling fields. — Ted Roggenbuck, Nebraska Territory
|
You Remind Me of Me
Copyright © 2004
by Dan Chaon
Ballantine
How to Buy
|
You Remind Me Of Me is one of the strangest, most beautiful, most compelling books I've read in a long time.
Unnerving and real, intricately plotted, wonderfully written, it's a Chinese box of a novel, full of hidden
pleasures and surprises. — Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Giant's House and Niagara Falls
All Over Again
Dan Chaon's novel You Remind Me Of Me is nothing short of brilliant. The novel is haunting me and I can't stop
thinking about it — both as a reader and as a deeply admiring writer. I wish I had a better adjective than superb.
— Caroline Leavitt, author of Girls in Trouble
One of Dan Chaon's many gifts is his ability to probe deeply and delicately into sorrow. This gift serves him
beautifully in You Remind me of Me, a novel about adoption, about the quiet sadness that lies at the bottom of
all his characters' troubles. — Jane Hamilton, author of A Map of The World
Beautiful, painful, and sure-footed, You Remind me of Me tracks the delicate connections between a handful of l
ost and poignant lives, in the process giving them the radiance of a stained glass window. What a writer. Dan
Chaon is going to have a breathtaking literary career? —
Three lives viewed through a kaleidoscope of memories and secret pain assume a kind of mythical dimension in Chaon's
piercingly poignant tale of fate, chance and search for redemption. ... Chaon's clarity of observation, expressed
in restrained, nuanced prose, coupled with his compassion for his flawed characters, creates a heart-wrenching story
of people searching for connection. — Publishers Weekly
Acclaimed storywriter Chaon (Among the Missing, 2001, etc.) affirms his matchless skill in crafting the small sketch.
... powerful, promising writer. — Kirkus Reviews
|
What the Critics Say
Bibliography
