AWAIT YOUR REPLY, by Dan Chaon

(originally posted on September 6, 2009)

I suppose all I can really do is repeat everyone's near-universal praise of the book, but such repetition is necessary because I marvel at how Chaon can juggle so many storylines and merge them together at differing points, letting the reader discern connections at his or her leisure instead of force-feeding strands down the proverbial throat. The payoff is great but AWAIT YOUR REPLY is less about how things resolve and more about how life defies resolution, instead hanging in a balance like a perpetual dominant seventh chord that begs to reach the tonic, but never quite does.