Await Your Reply

Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon, is a literary novel that has the force of a good thriller. I read the last few pages breathlessly, pleased with myself that I had figured out the book's central conceit but still wondering where it was going.

The novel trades off chapters between three protagonists: Miles, a twin who has been searching for his lost brother, Hayden, for a decade, and is following a trail that leads to the edge of the Arctic circle in Canada; Lucy, a high-school girl who has run away with her charismatic history teacher to his family's abandoned motel in Nebraska; and Ryan, a college student who goes missing and presumed dead from his comfortable suburban life and takes up with his biological father, who runs Internet scams.

Internet scams and identity theft is at the heart of the book. The book's title comes from one of those email cons, in which a person from Africa (often Nigeria, but here the Ivory Coast) promises a fortune in exchange for a little assistance. Chaon writes out an entire email like this, and inserts it midway through the book, and it takes patience to fully realize why it's there. Like a developing photograph, everything comes into focus slowly, as it's understood that Miles' missing brother is somehow involved in all three of these stories.

Beyond the suspense of the work, the writing is precise and extraordinary. There isn't a wasted word. The language is not flowery, but it isn't terse either. The three main characters are all passive and close to inarticulate, existing in the shadow of a more powerful figure (Miles' brother, Lucy's teacher, Ryan's father), which makes for simple if not almost non-existent dialogue. But the characters are vivid nonetheless, if only in their quiet despair.

I especially liked the relationship between the brothers. Hayden is possibly a genius but certainly mentally ill, with an overactive imagination (the brothers have taken an atlas and drawn a Tolkien-like world on it) that dwarfs Miles. He is accused by their mother of enabling his delusions, but he can't help but be wrapped up in Hayden's world.

This book should be enjoyed both by those who like mysteries and those who disdain them. It's an excellent read.