Await Your ReplyA Novel

A tantalizing, ever-twisting shell game of a literary thriller
Modern identity crimes provide a fresh context for the great American trope of the self-made (and remade) man, and Dan Chaon takes that inspiration to create a heart-pounding and heartbreaking novel. Await Your Reply alternates its chapters between three discrete stories, each about a credulous loner in the thrall of an iconoclastic loved one: Ryan, who drops out of college to run scams with his "uncle"; Lucy, whose college rejection letters prompt her to leave town with her history-teacher paramour; and Miles, who can't seem to get his life started for want of tracking down his schizophrenic twin brother.

Chaon says he began writing Await Your Reply as a series of chapter-length short stories, and indeed the first half is reminiscent of contemporary lit-magazine fiction, establishing an ominous mood and flashing back more than it moves its story arcs forward. The three plotlines are studded with little rhyming details, tying the protagonists together in ways that mostly highlight the dimness of both their ambitions and perceptions. It's not until past the halfway point that the thriller part of its "literary thriller" billing really kicks in. When it does, it kicks hard, exploiting its carefully built structure to prolong cliffhangers and subliminally answer questions. The audiobook gains a lot from Kirby Heyborne's quiet performance, letting you feel the protagonists' bruises one moment and pricking the back of your neck the next.

Chaon is a crafty, playful writer. He knows that readers have been conditioned to wonder whether Miles' evil twin might really be only a facet of Miles' own personality, and so he teases with unreliable-narrator ambiguity and lots of winking signifiers (Miles lives at the Hyde Arms). The question quickly becomes less about the novel's outcome than how Chaon will deal with genre-driven expectations. The genius of Await Your Reply is, when such matters resolve themselves, it's often to reveal a completely different O. Henry surprise from which Chaon's sleight of hand had misdirected you. Don't be dissuaded by the ambling early going; if it fools you into thinking that you're not in the hands of a masterful plotter, then he's pulled off the biggest misdirection of all.