Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply

In case you’re wondering, the author's last name is “pronounced like shawn—not like chaos, though that would be more appropriate, perhaps” (or so Dan Chaon’s Twitter bio explains). If I were to supply Chaon with a bio it may be something more like “I write books that are so good, you will want to read all of what I have written.” In Await Your Reply, Chaon expertly combines complex, somewhat despicable characters, an ever increasingly insidious plot, and themes of identity—the plot revolves around identity thievery and identity repurposing by those thieves. As for the title, there are too many layers of replies, responses, and awaited responses to enumerate—all of which, though, contribute to how identity is constructed or deconstructed, especially in the digital world.

When I began this book, I had two reactions: I pegged the book as a light read, and I was wary of a book that had a rotating narrative structure given that my last read, Brady Udall’s The Lonely Polygamist, also had multiple narratives. To compare the two narrative structures, however, is a disservice to both books, which are both amazing in completely different ways, and I soon realized that there was nothing light about reading Chaon’s book: it is quite dark in topic, and has absolutely perfect literary moments. Without giving too much away, the book begins with a severed hand, a Lolita-esque scene with a teenage girl driving across country with an older man, and a twin obsessed with finding his likely psychotic brother. The biggest payoff is how these plots tie together: not all once, but along the way you see clues, and connections. There were surprises along the way, and I was tricked by an ending I never saw coming—and happily tricked because it was done so neatly without leaving a trail of plot holes in its wake.

There were a great many things to like about this book. The author has an excellent flashback technique, a propensity for suspense, and a sophisticated approach to questions about identity. How do we create ourselves, and how do we re-create ourselves? What is the mark that individuals leave on the world? Are we more then just a digital footprint, and is existence linked to more than birth and death certificates? Can we ever even be the same person our whole lives, even without consciously reinventing ourselves? To what extent do others contribute or affect our identities, and, how easy is it for someone to take on your identity or take away your identity?  Chaon’s answer to this final question is abundantly clear: easily. So easily, that we should not take permanence for granted.

Chaon is also the author of, among other works, You Remind Me of Me and most recently Stay Awake. I hope to read both of these, and tout de suite.

Chaon, Dan. Await Your Reply. New York: Ballantine Books, 2010.

Brady Udall's The Lonely Polygamist

After hearing all the buzz surrounding this book, I was very eager to read it, and I must say, it exceeded my expectations. I was unsure of what to expect exactly. I wondered if would be a veiled diatribe on the evils of polygamy, or, perhaps, on the other end of the spectrum, a book about acceptance of non-traditional lifestyles. Neither of these suspicions proved correct. Instead, the book was about universal themes of loneliness, responsibility, and family. Perhaps most impressively, Udall drew together an impressive number of themes, characters, and narratives, which achieve a complexity that maintains a reader’s interest without creating a confusing story. As an added bonus, Udall has a true skill with prose that makes this novel a delight to read.

The Lonely Polygamist follows the life of Golden Richards: husband to four wives, father to twenty-eight children, and a man lacking backbone by all accounts. As Brady Udall tells the story of Golden, he weaves in the trials and tribulations Golden experiences as he deals with temptation, tells an ever-growing lie to his wives and community, and struggles with feelings of loneliness despite the fact he never seems to be alone. (The polygamist plot certainly offers a way to magnify the themes in the novel, especially loneliness.) To give more perspective to the story, Udall follows two other characters to expose how multiple Richards are experiencing the same disappointments in life. Insights into the lives of Golden’s fourth wife and one of his sons who is undoubtedly the black sheep of the family uncover a recurrent issue in all three major narratives: neglect—a neglect that permeates the lives of the Richards family. Not only do the parents neglect the children—there are simply so many—but the spouses neglect each other, the children neglect their siblings, and, worst of all, they all neglect themselves and neglect attending to things will that achieve fulfillment and contentment.

Ultimately, the results of the neglect manifest as feelings of being encumbered. The Richards clan is burdened by the oppressive feelings of neglect, burdened by their pasts, and burdened by each other. In the end, though, the situations the characters saw as burdens outside their control, they now see as responsibilities chosen out of love. While the characters do not necessarily find the happiness they expected, and without giving too much away, they do find ways to accept the choices they have made and do so with a greater appreciation of the boundlessness of love. And so, I will end with a quote from the book that, to me, captures the beauty of one of the message of the book:

          Because this, after all, was the basic truth they all chose to live by: that love was no infinite       

          commodity. That it was not subject to the cruel reckoning of addition and subtraction, that to give   

          to one did not necessarily mean to take from another; that the heart, in its infinite capacity .  . . 

          could open itself to all who would enter, like a house with windows and doors thrown wide, like 

          the heart of God itself, vast and accommodating and holy, a mansion of rooms without number, 

          full of multitudes without end. (545)

Udall, Brady. The Lonely Polygamist. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.