Chaon is not a writer of weird fiction, yet many of his stories are haunting in the way good weird fiction is haunting. When a talented writer--and Chaon is one--takes as his subject characters of limited awareness who are tried by extremity, and when he views those characters not only with irony but also with empathy, something surprising and disturbing often happens. Suddenly, the universe of the story may appear to expand and distort, as if to accommodate the immensity of the pain, and--if we More...

People must be warned: If you hate depressing stories, you should never, ever read Dan Chaon. I have heard him described as an author of Midwest Gothic, and I can think of no better term. This is a depressing collection, with stories that rear up out of their tragedy so that they may drag you deeper. The endings will leave you without satisfaction, either. They do not give you resolution, though they do point the way down the road where that resolution may lay (hint: you don't want to go there, More...

This book is bleak, really, really bleak. Not for one paragraph will you read something that can possibly produce a feeling of hope in your heart. It could almost be enough to drive you to a life of loveless solitude, because if you believe in the universe Chaon creates here, something bad will inevitably happen to whomever you care about most and destroy your very being.

I bloody loved it.

Chaon brings darkness to the short story form like Carver, or a personal favourite of mine, Ron Rash’s Burni More...

I was in the middle of the title story when I realized that Dan Chaon had written a collection of horror tales. In these stories, human beings perpetrate horrors such as abandonment, abuse, neglect upon each other. Relatives are left to clean up the emotional refuse after events such as a house fire, or parental suicide. I came across one review that labeled Chaon an "evil puppet master," and I suppose that is because he puts his characters through the wringer. Some stories in this collection ar More...

I had a dream I was awake and I woke up to find myself asleep.
-Stan Laurel

This amazing collection of stories provides readers with words and ideas to promote life reflection. I absolutely love Dan Chaon's magical ability :-)

One of my favorite books ever! So far, I have read it four times since it was published in February 2012 and I am excited for any new work by Dan Chaon. I highly recommend Dan Chaon's books especially Stay Awake and Await Your Reply - if you like stories that keep you thinki More...

:P
:i
:O
....... Many more expressions came on ma face while I read this one...
obviously NIce.....
obviously touchy..
obviously good....
And..of course..obviously...well written..
But.. I JUST HATED THAT ONE...
Great lesson: All books with cool covers may not have the same effect inside....

This is a collection of 12 stories and a great book. Perfectly titled, I could not fall asleep while reading this book. Each story pulls you in. You are compelled to finish a story, after which you can dwell on the emotions and thoughts that each story evoked, or you can check the time and see if you might be able to finish another story before you have to put the book down. Each story is a gem. I won an uncorrected proof, but would love to add a hardcopy of this book to my collection. This is a More...

There are some really great stories in this book. They make you think - Is what this person doing wrong? What would I do in this situation? Although some of them are so far out there that you really couldn't put yourself in that situation. Most of the stories ended without a clear ending - which is fine, I enjoy coming to my own conclusions. A few of them, though, never seemed to develop a story. One that really stuck with me was that of the 44 year old divorced January who starts (re-starts?) a More...

In a piece on revision published in the May/June 2010 issue of Poets & Writers, Ben Percy mentions that at one time in his writing career he considered himself an "organic" writer who pieced together his stories through one "act of discovery" after another. Percy employs a gardening metaphor to further develop his definition, suggesting that the act of composing and the act of revising a piece were very close in nature: "I let the garden grow," Percy writes, equating composing to letting nat More...

Critically acclaimed author Dan Chaon is back with an outstanding collection of short stories, Stay Awake. And if you think you don’t like short stories, this haunting collection will change your mind.

One of my favorites from the collection is Bees, in which a father’s life begins to spiral out of control with the onset of his child’s night terrors; this leads to his own inability to continue repressing the memories of his secret first wife and child, who he abandoned so long ago. It’s riveting. More...

http://charlotteswebofbooks.blogspot....

It isn't the gory stuff that gets to me, it is the suspenseful building of a story, that gets my pulse racing. Dan Chaon has done just that with the short stories in his new collection, Stay Awake. Dan Chaon has got a heck of imagination and he sure knows how to use it for good instead of evil. Wait. Should that be the other way around?

He starts his collection out with a doozy of a story. When a Father's young son is having problems sleeping, it causes dea More...

The characters in Dan Chaon’s short story collection “Stay Awake” are quiet. They have experienced loss: a person, themselves or a ring finger that popped off after a nasty spill from a ladder. Maybe they are leaving something. Or maybe they aren’t even aware yet of the loss, like baby Rosalie, born with an additional head, part of another baby that did not form and has been surgically removed. Her father imagines for her a time in the future when the girl will wake and hear a voice in her head More...

Stories to keep you awake, thinking
Dan Chaon's incredibly smart, captivating "Await Your Reply" was one of my 2009 Top Ten books. I admired it for being taut, for its plotting and for its ability to throw a new surprise at you in almost every new chapter.

With its worn-torn cover it's the one book I've been handing to friends with the directive: read this.

I've been anticipating "Stay Awake," Chaon's latest, a collection of short stories that turns out to be about people living isolated, disconne More...

There are short stories that are uplifting, thought-provoking, and leave the reader to walk away feeling as if life has somehow become a bit richer for reading them. Then, there are short stories that horrify,depress, and awaken a person to the harsh realities of life with a slap to the face. Stay Awake by Dan Chaon is one of those latter type of collections.

I only became a fan of short story collections a relatively short time ago. I've been an avid reader for most of my life, but it wasn't unt More...

This is my first time reading Dan Chaon and I was pleasantly surprised…and a little scared later that night. These stories are CREEPY and I enjoyed that, they remind me of The Twilight Zone mixed in with Tales from the Crypt. Most of the stories are not outright hit you in the face scary, but psychologically it creeps up on you scary. If you are the faint of heart, you should probably skip this book.
My favorite part about this book was that all the stories were interconnected. You’d read a lin More...

This book is a series of short stories by Dan Chaon. These stories are not for the faint of heart/the sensitive. Themes throughout the book include [family] tragedy and death, and can sometimes be difficult to read. The first two stories, "The Bees" is a poor introduction to the rest of the book, as it is, in my opinion, one of the most depressing. Others, such as "To Psychic Underworld" were lighter and thought-provoking. The title story, "Stay Awake" is the most cerebral, literally. About a yo More...

I was first introduced to Dan Chaon when I started getting interested in short stories in the late 1990s. I remember being blown away by several of his stories, and over the years I eagerly devoured both of his novels, You Remind Me of Me and Await Your Reply, which was one of my favorite books I read in 2009. Stay Awake is Chaon's return to short stories, and while I didn't feel that any of the stories in this collection packed the power of some of his older stories, they are still tremendously More...

A Memorable Exploration of the Darkest Corners of Contemporary American Life

Critically acclaimed American writer Dan Chaon’s latest short story collection, “Stay Awake”, chronicles some of the darkest corners of modern American life, exploring love, grief, and loneliness as though each tale was a “Twilight Zone” episode. In simple, yet vivid, prose, Chaon demonstrates his ample gifts as both a riveting storyteller and fine prose stylist in the dozen stories collected here. “The Bees” is a riveti More...

This collection of short stories, very poetic and beautifully written, describe people who are living with despair, depression or both, people whose lives have deadended and who are trying to cope with loss. I did not read them all at once but came back to them over a period of time, because they were so difficult to read. A man who had gathered his possessions in a circle around him in the living room of his house and who moves outside the circle only to eat or relieve himself. A man who has lo More...

Dan Chaon,

Yours is always one of the first names that pops into my head when I ponder who my favorite writers are. I love the subtlety, depth, and intelligence of your writing - most of all, I love the surprising flashes of sly humor, which often get overlooked because of the immense sadness that pervades your work. You always have such great opening paragraphs that I'm immediately drawn in... you love depicting characters who are "stuck," and I usually can't stand reading about stasis or passiv More...

As I've said earlier, Chaon is one of my favorite contemporary writers. I looked forward to this collection. Overall, it's a satisfying read. Chaon appears to be thought of, first and foremost, as "the bleak guy". I don't mind bleak; the way he writes about that territory, there's often something I feel a kinship towards. (And I know how that must sound, but it really has a lot to do with being preoccupied with what it means to be human.) This collection starts off rather forcefully, esp. with t More...

After a two year post-university hiatus where I was more inclined to pick up a copy of 90 Minutes or Melody Maker than a book, it was Irvine Welsh's The Acid House that reignited my interest in reading back in the early nineties. So, it's perhaps surprising that I have rarely returned to the short story format.

But, by the evidence of this masterful collection of modern American tales from Dan Chaon, there is plenty of life left in this way of doing things - perhaps more than that given peo More...

This was a book of short stories that were very, very dark in tone--all of them. Which I liked because it was kind of different and almost fun to revel in the gruesomeness and in the dark aspects of the human spirit. These were unapologetically negative people and situations--car crashes, deformed babies, abandoned children, coffins, suicides, etc. Don't read this book after you've had a bad day! But in the right mood, it was interesting.

I did not, however, think it was very compelling or any k More...

I don't normally pick up a collection of short stories but somehow this book caught my eye on the library shelf. Of course, I liked some of the stories better than others but the ones I remember the most are "The Bees," "Long Delayed, Always Expected," and "Stay Awake." "The Bees" probably stands out the most in my mind because the ending so so horrific and unexpected - I wanted to cry at such horrible loss of a wife and son by the man's older son that he had written off to a former life. So sad More...

Many have often described Chaon as a horror writer, and I agree. He writes a suburban gothic, stories infused with death that feel both otherworldly and completely possible. In this book even the living have ghosts, whether it's the memory of a mother long in jail, the part of you that died when your father unloaded an empty gun on your entire family, or notes that seem to mysteriously appear, notes you don't remember writing yourself. What I find so horrific about Chaon's stories are their plau More...

I love Dan Chaon. This is the fourth book of his I've read; two novels, two collections of short stories. And the stories in this collection, most of which take place in Ohio and elsewhere in the midwest--it's not so "regular" out there in middle of the country. A couple tries for years and finally uses available technology to have a baby; their daughter is born with an extra head fused to her head. A father of a five year old finds himself experience intensifying guilt and flashbacks, now that More...

In the past five years, I haven't read a better novel than Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply, an utterly engrossing story of identity in a modern, digital age, at once a mystery, thriller, and much more. So I eagerly tore into his story collection Stay Awake, hoping to experience more of what made his novel so memorable for me. Unfortunately, while there is some astonishing writing on display in Chaon's short stories, the experience was ultimately only partially as fulfilling as I'd hoped.

The proble More...

“Thinking of You in Your Time of Sorrow”

Death and sadness in the heartland. Mortality is a constant presence in this collection of stories, sometimes crouching in a distant corner or looming over every perfectly framed sentence. This is a gallery of troubled souls, dealing with a parasitic baby, a brain-damaged husband, suicide, infanticide, various car wrecks, capital punishment and the forlorn parade shuffles on.
Spread out, through various towns and cities, from Ohio to Nebraska, these charact More...

One of the most haunting short story collections I can recall reading since being an adult (I read a lot of creepy stuff and Poe as a kid but that was of a different kind). Overall a very solid collection of short stories that I would classify as existential horror. They all involve characters that have lost someone or something and how that has haunted them in ways both literal and figurative. Many of the stories seem incomplete, which works well to add to the sense of foreboding, however for s More...

Главная радость поздней осени – появление первых списков “лучшего за уходящий год”: книги, фильмы, музыка. Обязательно находишь в этих списках много полезного – что-то пропустил, о чем-то не знал или просто забыл. Сборник новелл Дэна Чэона “Stay Awake” из этой же рубрики, я нашел его в голосовалке на Гудридзе в номинации “лучший хоррор 2012 года”. Я понятия не имею, кто такой Чэон, читать мелкую прозу попросту не люблю, поэтому более случайной книги для чтения придумать было сложно.

Герой первог More...