NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Washington Post - San Francisco Chronicle
Before the critically acclaimed novels Await Your Reply and You
Remind Me of Me, Dan Chaon made a name for himself as a renowned writer
of dazzling short stories. Now, in Stay Awake, Chaon returns to that
form for the first time since his masterly Among the Missing, a
finalist for the National Book Award.
In these haunting, suspenseful stories, lost, fragile, searching
characters wander between ordinary life and a psychological shadowland.
They have experienced intense love or loss, grief or loneliness,
displacement or disconnection--and find themselves in unexpected, dire,
and sometimes unfathomable situations.
A father's life is upended by his son's night terrors--and disturbing
memories of the first wife and child he abandoned; a foster child
receives a call from the past and begins to remember his birth mother,
whose actions were unthinkable; a divorced woman experiences her own
dark version of "empty-nest syndrome"; a young widower is unnerved by
the sudden, inexplicable appearances of messages and notes--on dollar
bills, inside a magazine, stapled to the side of a tree; and a college
dropout begins to suspect that there's something off, something
sinister, in his late parents' house.
Dan Chaon's stories feature scattered families, unfulfilled dreamers,
anxious souls. They exist in a twilight realm--in a place by the window
late at night when the streets are empty and the world appears to be
quiet. But you are up, unable to sleep. So you stay awake.
Praise for Stay Awake
"Eerily beautiful . . . [Chaon] is the modern day John
Cheever."--Boston Sunday Globe
"Powerful and disturbing . . . The shocks in this collection are
many."--The Washington Post
"Chaon is able to create fully realized characters in mere pages. . . .
This collection is further proof that Chaon is one of the best fiction
writers working right now."--Omaha World-Herald
"There are not many fiction writers who can do what Dan Chaon can do. .
. . [He is] a literary force."--The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Intense and suspenseful . . . a highly recommended work, not to be
missed."--Library Journal (starred review)
"Mesmerizing . . . gripping, masterful fiction."--The Plain Dealer
"Superbly disquieting."--The New York Times Book Review
Don't miss the exclusive conversation between Dan Chaon and Emma
Straub at the back of the book.
