I have a recommendation for you. As you finish each story in 'Stay Awake,' don't just charge into the next one. Close the book and put it down. Close your eyes. Breathe. Take a few minutes. Let it soak in. Then open your eyes, open the book, and start the next one.

The remarkable thing in Dan Chaon's short story collection is how the stories feel connected. Not by character or plot, but by repeated themes and images, each of these stories feels somehow part of a whole.

Whether it's a story about a baby born with two heads and its effect on a struggling couple, or the musings on roadside memorials during a road trip seen through a haze of drugs and drink, or the mystery of the attraction of random notes to one lost and lonely person... these stories of loss and sadness and isolation all feel somehow as one. Occasionally it feels vaguely repetitive (the missing finger of a character in two different stories for example) but the overall effect is haunting and captivating.

Taken in themselves, these stories are told with an elegant voice, distant yet intimate. Each is interesting in its own right, and each deserves its own place. Chaon uses words you don't see often in the light of day, words like "gossamer" and "tristesse," sure to challenge and enhance almost any reader's vocabulary... and more to the point, he uses them to good effect, building a sharp literary sensibility in these stories of people lost in their own worlds.

These fragile connections, these dreamlike wisps of ideas that flow from one story to the next to the next, these appear over time. When you let the stories sink in, one at a time, the connections show forth. Take some time. Read with purpose. Stay Awake.