Who are YOU?

This will be a short post because I don't want to take up the time I think you should be spending at the bookstore or library purchasing and reading this recommendation.

Mysteries and thrillers often fall victim to formulaic plots and stereotyped characters (crusty old private eyes, sassy teenage girl detectives, etc.) but Dan Choan's novel, Await Your Reply, suffers from neither of these problems, and establishes itself as one of the most unique and intriguing suspense stories I've read.

Without giving too much away, the plot is a tritych of stories whose connection is woven so subtly into the events as to be eerily dreamlike--you'll find yourself wondering if you imagined mention of one clue in another part of the story as you read.

In the opening pages, a young man with a severed hand is rushed to the hospital by his father; in the second introduction, a teenage girl with a forgettable past leaves town with her high school history teacher; in the third, a man searches the icy Canadian landscape for his missing identical twin. The thread binding them together is the mysterious nature of identity--and identity theft.

If you liked House of Sand and Fog and The Garden of Last Days by Andred Dubus III, Chaon's book will claim a couple of hours of your life, too--and you won't be sorry.