Unsaid

Dan Chaon (pronounced ‘Shawn’) has always intrigued me.  His two novels (‘You Remind Me of Me’ and ‘Await Your Reply’) both are intricately and interestingly plotted.  The reader only gradually becomes aware of what’s what, who’s who.  During the experience of reading little by little we figure it out.  Some of our suspicions along the way may prove to be correct, others not.  There’s often a macabre element.  Chaon’s subject matter is often not pretty.

So I was happy to see a new collection of stories by Chaon, ‘Stay Awake’.  The novels are long and complex.  How would Chaon deal with the short story form?

Very well indeed.  These are stories about characters that are in the process of discovery.  Often we don’t know what they are about to discover.  They are often stuck in a kind of limbo after a difficult experience that they don’t fully understand.  They may be hiding it from themselves, or others may be concealing the truth.  The actual unveiling doesn’t happen in the story itself.  At the end of the story we are left with a strong feeling of anticipation.  Something important is going to happen. 

The last sentence of the story ‘I Wake Up’ is:

‘---Oh yes I remembered I remembered and jolted up and grabbed for my flashlight even before I was fully awake.’

This from a character with real trauma in his past, but who has been living in a kind of trance.  As readers we know something is difficult will be revealed to him.  As readers we’re left with a strong feeling of anticipation.  We can speculate about what he will remember, but that’s not the point.  Chaon is masterful at depicting the feeling that something important is about to happen.  His characters here are like the readers of his novels:  they know something, but not the whole story.  That is only revealed in time.  And the process of getting there is fascinating.