I didn't know
Dan Chaon had a new book coming out until Iread Benjamin Percy's short preview in the February
Esquire. It's a collectionof stories called
Stay Awake, following Chaon's well-reviewed novels
Among the Missing and
Await Your Reply.
Percy says this: "If Chaon's 2001 novel,
Among the Missing, which was nominated for a National Book Award,contained some of the best fiction written in the past 20 years,
Stay Awake is its darker, moreunsettling cousin. These stories are defined by disturbing unreliability, withjust enough room between the characters' memories, like the space between treesin a dark forest, to slip through, get lost." [Note to self: include lines likethis in future book reviews so that other people will quote them.]
Publication date is February 7, 2012, from Ballantine.
Published on January 25, 2012 05:07