Customer Reviews

Stay Awake: Stories

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've read most of Dan Chaon's work and completely enjoyed all of it, including this new collection of short stories. On the surface the stories don't appear to have much in common, but after reading for a while, you notice that many of them feature people who have been in car accidents - hospitals and funerals also seem to appear regularly. This probably sounds like a turn-off, but not really. If you have a taste for the darker side, you'll enjoy this book. I hasten to point out, when I say "darker" I don't mean blood and guts or violence - just a sense of being unsettled or a little disturbed.

Chaon has a gift for writing about very odd things happening to very ordinary people. It's easy to feel a kinship with his characters; they could be me or my friends and neighbors. What makes his stories unique is the mash-up of the "regular folks" and the weird and sometimes terrifying situations that Chaon drops them into. These stories include such scenarios as parents dealing with a newborn baby with a parasitic twin; a father experiencing a prophetic nightmare; a woman whose ex-husband has a brain injury which makes him like a child; a young man whose estranged sister starts calling him, bringing up repressed memories of a horrible childhood incident; a widower who finds himself a "magnet" for odd notes and a man who realizes he's made a big mistake when he kidnaps his former girlfriend's son.

Like Chaon's previous story collection, Among the Missing, Stay Awake is a book I could not put down. I felt the same about his novel Await Your Reply. He's one of the few authors whose books I would buy without checking the reviews on Amazon first. His work reminds me a little bit of Chuck Palahniuk - not that he goes as far into the darkness as Palahniuk - but in his weird, nightmarish vision. Highly recommended - if you haven't read Chaon's work before, give it a try. If you are like me, you'll be totally hooked and find yourself back online ordering all of his other books.

Dan Chaon is an Ohio based writer who has published three novels and many short stories. In this collection of short stories, Mr. Chaon explores the theme of deaths of loved ones and how these events change our relationships with others and change our self-interpretations. Each story is unique but has a common factor of the death of a child, father, mother or some other person close to the characters. The deaths are either current events or are part of the personal histories of the characters. The recent or distant memories of loss haunt the characters and emerge from unconscious storage unbidden or are deliberately retrieved. The focus of the narratives involves showing the cues that bring the ghosts of the past into consciousness and how the characters deal with them.

The uniqueness of each story causes the reader to become involved with the action described. The thread of death in the stories strengthens as the reader progresses through the book. Awareness develops about the thread and ideas that the stories are continuous, with secondary characters perhaps branching off from the action of earlier stories. Like the memory of a person who has experienced loss of a loved one, the reader's memory of loss in an early story is triggered by unexpected cues presented in a later one. Much like a person who has lost a loved one and repressed some of the memories surrounding that person, the reader must search her memory for connecting details of an earlier story. A hint of something may arise and the reader wonders is this what happened to the brother, friend, lover?

The stories also trigger memories of the reader's own losses of people who were important to her. She may look up from the book and recollect faces, events, clothing, photos, as do the characters in the stories. The characters have to face the distinction between memories and nostalgia, the difference being that the former can be reinterpreted looking back with wisdom. The latter are fixed by the initial interpretation given of the event and cannot be reworked. Fixed interpretations offer little in the way of emotional growth that would normally occur with maturity. I went so far as to skim back through all 12 stories to look for connections much like one of the characters in a story, who looks for hidden messages in random notes. I found in some cases, my own experiences with death interfered with my memories of the fictional experiences of the characters, showing the complexities of any life review that mixes memories with nostalgia.

I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Chaon's collection of stories. He takes the reader through a process of tension in the lack of closure in the stories, discovery in the emotional reactions of the characters and in ourselves, and a resolution of tension in bypassing nostalgia to examine true accounts of memory with the original emotional impact. A conclusion might be to "stay awake" to the memories of lost loved ones to prevent the second loss of them through fixing them like lilacs in plexiglas.

I'm a Dan Chaon fan. His unusual ideas and interwoven plots are typically a pleasure to read. It's true that his work characteristically tackles difficult subject matter, but I've never been outright disturbed by his stories ... until now.

For me, Stay Awake proved a grueling read. Not because it's badly written - that's not the case at all. Chaon is an excellent writer. No, it's because this book is dark - extremely dark. Chaon's too classy to go for the gratuitous. It's the suggestiveness within the book, those horrific details stated matter-of-factly that put me on edge. Babies die. Mother's die. Children die. People get hurt. People suffer. And it's not just one of the stories where these things happen ... it's all of them.

Perhaps it's testament to Chaon's skill that he consistently ravaged my nerves. I've read stories such as these before, but they never felt so real ... so ... personal. Chaon's characters, though we barely know them at all, are living, breathing people that easily could live next door to us. Maybe it's because his characters are so universal that his writing dug so deep. For an entire book, he reminds us that tragedy can strike at anytime to anyone.

So did I like the book? No, quite honestly, I did not. However, I like Dan Chaon very much, and I like virtually everything else he's written very much. For me to say I didn't like Stay Awake is not an attack on the book itself, for I admit I am not being objective. I admit the subject matter disturbed me and agitated my own fears. As a result, I truly didn't want to finish it (though I obviously did).

Stay Awake is well written. It does everything from a technical standpoint that you would expect from a writer of Chaon's caliber. Its characters are identifiable and interesting. Its plots are unusual and provocative. It will probably trouble you.

~Scott William Foley, author of Andropia

Dan Chaon is an excellent writer. I loved his novel, By Dan Chaon: Await Your Reply: A Novel, so I jumped at the chance to read this collection.

Although it is the same Dan Chaon with suspense and mystery, this short-story collection is marked by a feeling of despair and disconnection, and saturated with sadness. This intense feeling stems from the passing of his wife to ovarian cancer. And as a reader, I could not help but wonder which story told of his grief, or most closely resembled his isolation. Morbid and voyeuristic yes, but this is still a great read regardless of his creation.

My favorite story is "The Bees," such a strong way to open the collection; it is a haunting tale of betrayal and insanity. Also good are "Patrick Lane, Flabbergasted," "Long Delayed, Always Expected," "I Wake Up," "To the Psychic Underworld:," "St. Dismas," and "The Farm, The Gold, The Lily-White Hands;" I know that is quite a few to list, but I really like this collection.

Haunting, beautiful, poetic, romantic, sad, deranged, and immaculately written, this collection is worth a read. Highly recommended.

Loss is the watchword in this collection of twelve stories by National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon. Its characters live in the shadow of death, separation, and other traumas, trying and failing to cope with the magnitude of the things that have happened to them. For Gene, the protagonist of "The Bees," the first and best of the stories, it's the wife and child he left behind when escaping his alcoholic past. For January of "Long Delayed, Always Expected," it's empty nest syndrome at her daughter's departure for college, complicated by the continuing presence in her life of an ex-husband who suffered brain damage after their divorce, and is now at the mental level of an eleven-year-old. For Robert, first-person narrator of "I Wake Up," it's lingering confusion and uncertainty about the traumatic childhood that led to his adoption, and about his place in that adoptive family. In the face of such terrible situations, all they can do is try to rebuild some kind of life.

Try, and fail. These are not hopeful stories. At best their characters can hope to scrape by, caught in a halfway existence that doesn't seem tenable and yet goes on and on. At worst, further disasters are in store. Chaon writes about these dark topics very well, in a sensitive minimalist style; the stories never feel manipulative or melodramatic, and the characters, who see their failures in advance and know they're making mistakes but can't avoid the vortex of despair, are neither unbearably unsympathetic nor cheaply tragic plays for sympathy. On its own terms, each story is well-crafted and very readable. But taken together, especially when read in quick succession, they feel a little monotonous. The characters and situations are different enough, but the air of regret and yearning is constant. Even as I was admiring the dark momentum of each one, I wanted a flash of hope just to break up the sameness.

That said, the best stories are so powerful that the knowledge of how they'll end only makes it easier to appreciate the careful structure. "The Bees," in which the lost son might be a ghost haunting his father or simply a metaphor for the weight of addiction and memory, is a veritable classic of psychological horror. The non-linear "I Wake Up" circles brilliantly around the key moment that ties it all together. And the collection ends strongly with "The Farm. The Gold. The Lily-White Hands.", a slippery and surreal story that I would call post-modern, except that the word creates associations of the academic and of the playful that don't fit this dark, spooky tale of the cyclic nature of abuse, in which the impossibility of escape is brought home (even) more forcefully than in any of the previous pieces. This gift for raising human suffering to a poetic, almost supernatural level that captures the crushing unreality of any great loss is what sets Chaon apart as a writer, and what makes Stay Awake worth reading despite its continuing emphasis on a single emotional state.

This is a collection of short stories that deals with the more dark side of life. Many of the tales within are linked in subtle ways; nurses at hospitals, family members, and distance from others are common links. These are not happy tales by any means, but they do leave a person thinking about people and their own life in new ways. This is the strong point that Dan Chaons' writing is able to invoke this reaction.
To say that this book is full of just bad things happening to people is to do it a major injustice. The writing is strong and visual. One story, "Long Delayed, Always Expected" leaves the reader with a sense of, in the end, after all the mistakes and time past, sometimes things work out after all, but not in the way one would ever expect.
Dan Chaon uses words in an amazing way. From the story "The Farm. The Gold. The Lily-White Hands" he describes how the character of the father views the birth of his children and how it would change his life with the passage: "...there was the sense that once they were born he was trapped...He had built his own future brick by brick around himself but there were no doors or windows....He thought to himself, 'I am locked in'." In the same story his daughter miles and a lifetime away standing in the rain gets a feeling described as, "...It was not like a premonition of death...It is as if she died a long time ago, and just remembered it". The book is full of remarkable and descriptive writing, that instantly connects you to exactly what the character is feeling.
The story "Take This Brother, May It Serve You Well", takes it title from what most people know as a line on The Beatles White Album. During the song 'Revolution 9', John Lennon speaks this phrase among the sounds and noises that swirl around the track. At the end of the story, the main character 'Deagle' is told this line by another, and is handed something. Will what he is handed 'serve him well'? That depends on what you have decided 'Deagle' has chosen for his future.
There is a total of 12 short stories in this collection. There isn't a weak one in the collection, though some are stronger than others. "Stay Awake" the story in the book that was chosen as its title, is one that is pulls you in with the premise of the baby born with 2 heads and the father suffering his own situation.
Of course, this book is not for everyone. If you like feel good stories, this book is not going to provide that. This is a very good collection of short stories, a book to be read more than once. Most important it leaves one with many things to think about afterwards. An impressive work by Dan Chaon.

"Stay Awake" is an engrossing collection of dark short stories by Dan Chaon. They remind me of nightmares, not necessarily the oh-god-I-have-to-wake-up type, but more the unpleasant ones that may stay with you a while before being able to sleep again. And thus, in one way, Chaon somewhat achieves the stated "purpose" of the book's title. It's a good analogy and fits the dream-like quality this collection seems steeped in.

I'm a fan of Chaon, with some new reservations. In one of Chaon's earlier works, "You Remind Me of Me", there is a thread of hope and that particular book left a deep impression. In the case of these short stories, hope seems to be almost totally missing. These dread-soaked stories feel more open-ended, as if there are no resolutions, no real outcomes. Perhaps it's a clever device. Perhaps we're to finish them in our mind. But this is a tall order, as many readers may simply not want to think about these sordid little tales any longer than they have to. This is not a book for everyone and Chaon makes no attempt to ingratiate himself into the masses' good graces.

However, that said, I don't want to infer that the book is not worth reading. It is, if only because Chaon is a craftsman. A few of the stories use a bit of word/design play, much in the vein of some of Steven King's works. Words are set up in a pattern, almost koan-like or as haiku in various places to help elicit the emotional response of what is happening in the story arc. A bit heavy-handed, but still... it works. And what works more is the fact that Chaon writes with a realist's voice and is wholly believable, a quality which Stephen King's works always lacked for me.

For those wanting to float in a dark world of unsettling edges and places you want to leave quickly, I'd highly recommend this book.

A collection of twelve exquisite stories about broken people, wounded people, people who can't quite make it. Some of them were successful once, or promising, till the death of a spouse or the suicide of parents. Some were doomed from the outset. People a psychiatrist would call personality disorders. Some are antisocial characters who don't fit into any social structure. Some struggle against their fate for a time, but spiral down to their inescapable demise. There are no happy endings in this collection, no redemption, no resolution. Sometimes there is no clear ending, just a lingering question for the reader to answer.

Author Dan Chaon writes elegant, gripping prose that engages you from the first words of a story. You care about these unlikely characters even though you never feel too hopeful about them. The writing is earthy, not pretentious, and keeps you involved.

The stories have their flaws, to be sure. Certain themes are used and reused, like the man who loses a thumb falling from a ladder. As a reader I would have liked to see some hope for the characters, some uplifting note, but it was not to be. Still I had to keep reading. If you like your fiction dark and discouraging you will love this book. I recommend it highly. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

If you have a taste for dark writing and psychologically disturbing fare, this is a collection you will want to pay attention to. An open mind will be required for reading and frankly be cautioned there is gloom and despair throughout. Some people can handle that depressive and bothersome feel without internalizing. Almost as some can handle Stephen King and others absolutely cannot. It's not so much that Chaon is specifically like King however, they will both give you the creeps if you let them! Most stories with ordinary people dealing with some familiar harsh human struggles just in an uncommonly darker and deeper way and some hold more bizarre topics and offbeat characters as well. The author can pull you in so that you forget you are reading "just a short story" until it ends. Some of the endings leave you with questions... I don't mind wondering and having not all ends tied neat for me in my reading. I have come to expect open-ended feelings with short stories. It's pleasurable to read something that will linger a bit. It's smart and provocative if you can handle the dark without being dragged down by the subject matter. I find this sort of writing gripping and not at all off-putting. It takes a talent to pull off and I see that in Dan Choan's Stay Awake collection. To pull it off in a short story is an additional accomplishment. I will say that there were a few of the stories that I liked far and above the rest hence four stars instead of five.

Twelve short stories averaging about 20 pages each.

I have to admit after having read the first one I found my self wondering what was the point.

The Bees-

Gene's son Frankie screams in his sleep on a regular basis. Doctors cannot find a reason and assure Gene and his wife that he will outgrow it.
This is how the story starts. As you read on you find Gene has a secret he has kept from his wife. The majority of the story is about how Gene thinks and remembers this secret.

Flabbergasted-

Brandon reflects on his parents double suicide.

Stay Awake-

Zach and Amber's baby is born with a rare condition, the baby has two heads. A result of something gone wrong with conjoined twins.
The extra head seems alert and responsive, however it must be removed for the baby to have a normal life.

Long Delayed, Always Expected-

January deals with her daughter's departure and her ex-husband Jeffrey who resides in a group home because of brain damage he received in an accident.

Those are a few examples of the stories contained in this book. My description hardly give these stories justice. They must be read to be appreciated.

Still I was a bit confused about the point of this book until I reached the last story; The Farm. The Gold. The Lily White Hands when I finally reached the 'Ah-Ha!' moment.

If you like something different and easy to read, you might want to check out this book. Perhaps mildly disturbing for some, but definitely gives you something to think about.

Thank you.
MEF