Stay awake : stories / Dan Chaon.
Publication details: New York : Ballantine Books, [2012]Edition: First editionDescription: 254 pages ; 22 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 0345530373 (hardback)
- 9780345530370 (hardback)
- Short stories. Selections
- 813/.54 23
- PS3553.H277 S73 2012
Item type | Current library | Home library | Collection | Shelving location | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Cherry Hill Public Library | Cherry Hill Public Library | SSC | Fiction Collection | FICTION CHA (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 33407003732185 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Washington Post * San Francisco Chronicle
Before the critically acclaimed novels Await Your Reply and You Remind Me of Me, Dan Chaon made a name for himself as a renowned writer of dazzling short stories. Now, in Stay Awake, Chaon returns to that form for the first time since his masterly Among the Missing, a finalist for the National Book Award.
In these haunting, suspenseful stories, lost, fragile, searching characters wander between ordinary life and a psychological shadowland. They have experienced intense love or loss, grief or loneliness, displacement or disconnection--and find themselves in unexpected, dire, and sometimes unfathomable situations.
A father's life is upended by his son's night terrors--and disturbing memories of the first wife and child he abandoned; a foster child receives a call from the past and begins to remember his birth mother, whose actions were unthinkab≤ a divorced woman experiences her own dark version of "empty-nest syndrome"; a young widower is unnerved by the sudden, inexplicable appearances of messages and notes--on dollar bills, inside a magazine, stapled to the side of a tree; and a college dropout begins to suspect that there's something off, something sinister, in his late parents' house.
Dan Chaon's stories feature scattered families, unfulfilled dreamers, anxious souls. They exist in a twilight realm--in a place by the window late at night when the streets are empty and the world appears to be quiet. But you are up, unable to sleep. So you stay awake.
Praise for Stay Awake
"Eerily beautiful . . . [Chaon] is the modern day John Cheever."-- Boston Sunday Globe
"Powerful and disturbing . . . The shocks in this collection are many."-- The Washington Post
"Chaon is able to create fully realized characters in mere pages. . . . This collection is further proof that Chaon is one of the best fiction writers working right now."-- Omaha World-Herald
"There are not many fiction writers who can do what Dan Chaon can do. . . . [He is] a literary force."-- The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Intense and suspenseful . . . a highly recommended work, not to be missed."-- Library Journa l (starred review)
"Mesmerizing . . . gripping, masterful fiction."-- The Plain Dealer
"Superbly disquieting."-- The New York Times Book Review
The bees -- Patrick Lane, flabbergasted -- Stay awake -- Long delayed, always expected -- I wake up -- To Psychic Underworld -- St. Dismas -- Thinking of you in your time of sorrow -- Slowly we open our eyes -- Shepherdess -- Take this, Brother, may it serve you well -- The Farm, the gold, the lily-white hands.
"Before the critically acclaimed novels Await Your Reply and You Remind Me of Me, Dan Chaon made a name for himself as a renowned writer of dazzling short stories. Now, in Stay Awake, Chaon returns to that form for the first time since his masterly Among the Missing, a finalist for the National Book Award. In these haunting, suspenseful stories, lost, fragile, searching characters wander between ordinary life and a psychological shadowland. They have experienced intense love or loss, grief or loneliness, displacement or disconnection--and find themselves in unexpected, dire, and sometimes unfathomable situations. A father's life is upended by his son's night terrors--and disturbing memories of the first wife and child he abandoned; a foster child receives a call from the past and begins to remember his birth mother, whose actions were unthinkable; a divorced woman experiences her own dark version of "empty-nest syndrome"; a young widower is unnerved by the sudden, inexplicable appearances of messages and notes--on dollar bills, inside a magazine, stapled to the side of a tree; and a college dropout begins to suspect that there's something off, something sinister, in his late parents' house. Dan Chaon's stories feature scattered families, unfulfilled dreamers, anxious souls. They exist in a twilight realm--in a place by the window late at night when the streets are empty and the world appears to be quiet. But you are up, unable to sleep. So you stay awake"-- Provided by publisher.
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
National Book Award finalist Chaon follows up his critically acclaimed novel Await Your Reply with this disquieting collection of 12 stories. His characters are everyday people experiencing extreme emotional situations that pull them into a strange, shadowy otherworld. In "The Bees," five-year-old Frankie suffers from nightmares, while father Zach has dreams that feel like bees buzzing in his head about an ex-wife and son he deserted years ago. In "Patrick Lane, Flabbergasted," Brandon Fowler lives alone in a family house where his parents killed themselves; one night, he senses the house creeping in on him. In "Slowly We Open Our Eyes," brothers Smokey and Donnie O'Sullivan are traveling cross-country to their grandmother's funeral when they swerve to miss a deer and have an accident that changes everything. In the title story, Zach and Amber's new baby, Rosalie, is born with two heads. Soon after his daughter's birth, Zach is paralyzed in an auto accident and begins obsessing about the parasitic head. VERDICT The powerful writing in this intense and suspenseful collection draws us into the emotional maelstroms experienced by the characters. A highly recommended work, not to be missed. [See Prepub Alert, 8/8/11.]-Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Publishers Weekly Review
With this arresting collection, Chaon again demonstrates his mastery of the short story. In the hypnotic "The Bees," a young boy screams in his sleep for no reason; he's suffered no known distress. He doesn't even seem to be having nightmares. The boy's father, greatly disturbed, soon finds his own dark past threatening to overwhelm his present. In the title story, Zach and Amber's baby girl is born with an incompletely formed conjoined twin. When Zach narrowly survives death before a highly risky operation to separate the twins, this already fragile family is strained to the breaking point. An electrician named Critter, living with his young daughter in Toledo, Ohio, after the death of his wife, keeps found notes despite their troubling nature, in "To Psychic Underworld:." Chaon's protagonists are plagued by common traumas and struggle to rectify their decisions with the external forces of fate. More often than not, characters are stuck in an eddy that seems inescapable, yet which is also a moment's isolation from the surrounding flow. Chaon (Await Your Reply) brings readers fantastically close, slowly drawing them into the anxiety or loneliness or remorse of his characters, and building great anticipation for the twists to come. Agent: Noah Lukeman, Lukeman Literary Management. (Feb. 7) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.Booklist Review
Chaon's (Await Your Reply, 2009)newest enticing short story collection embraces unsettled moments in which lives shift and unfold. In To Psychic Underworld, Critter, a recently widowed husband left to raise his 1-year-old daughter, begins finding random handwritten notes on index cards, currency, inserts in magazines. As the notes appear more frequently, he is forced to come to terms with his wife's death as well as his place in the world. The haunting title story follows new parents Zach and Amy, whose daughter, Rosalie, is born with a parasitic twin. Tensions arise when Zach lands in the hospital after a near-fatal car accident and surgery to remove Rosalie's twin leads Zach into a cycle of doubts and what-ifs. Long Delayed, Always Expected finds 44-year-old January initiating a physical relationship with her brain-damaged ex-husband, Jeffrey, as a way to escape sullen thoughts about her life and the future. In The Bees, a son's sleep disorder becomes the catalyst for a father's reckoning of the past. Chaon's 12 tales deftly explore the reality and mystery of his characters' unmoored lives.--Strauss, Leah Copyright 2010 BooklistThere are no comments on this title.