You Remind Me of Me

Starred review from March 8, 2004
A starred or starred boxed review indicates a book of outstanding quality. A review with a blue-tinted title indicates a book of unusual commercial interest that hasn't received a starred or boxed review.

YOU REMIND ME OF ME
Dan Chaon
. Ballantine
, $24.95 (352p) ISBN 0-345-44141-9

Three lives viewed through a kaleidoscope of memories and secret pain assume a kind of mythical dimension in Chaon's piercingly poignant tale of fate, chance and search for redemption. As he demonstrated in his short story collection Among the Missing
, Chaon has a sensitive radar for the daily routines of people striving to escape the margins of poverty and establish meaningful lives. Here, a woman's unsuccessful effort to rise above the pain of giving away an illegitimate baby, and to fight against mental illness and offer love to a second child, blights all their lives. Living with his harsh and bitter mother, Norma, and his kindly grandfather in Little Bow, S.Dak., young Jonah Doyle is permanently scarred after the family's Doberman attacks and maims him. The resulting livid ridges on his face are the outward manifestations of a deeper wound that will always haunt him. After his mother's suicide, Jonah sets out to find the older brother he has never met, and in the process, brings them both to the verge of tragedy. Jonah's older sibling is Troy Timmens, a well-meaning bartender and sometime drug dealer in St. Bonaventure, Nebr., who is devoted to his six-year-old son, Loomis. The boy will play a pivotal part in Jonah's quixotic attempts to win Troy's love. Chaon structures his plot in alternating flashbacks, and the fragmentary time structure forces the reader to puzzle out the relationships and contributes to rising dramatic tension. Chaon's clarity of observation, expressed in restrained, nuanced prose, coupled with his compassion for his flawed characters, creates a heart-wrenching story of people searching for connection. (June)

Forecast
:Readers of Kent Haruf will find similarities here, in the settings in small towns on the Great Plains and in the dignified portrayal of people leading secret, stoic lives. Eight-city author tour
.

February 15, 2004
Chaon follows his celebrated story collection with a first novel about identity.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2004
Adult/High School-This first novel focuses on the disparate lives of a fragmented family as they struggle with the harsh realities of poverty, depression, and dysfunction. The story opens with Jonah, a troubled, self-involved boy in a small South Dakota town. Raised by a depressed and suicidal mother who never wanted him, he survives an attack from the family's Doberman only to be severely scarred on his face and hands. Jonah develops into a lonely and isolated man who tries to make connections with anyone willing to befriend him, only to push others away by eventually demanding more than they want to give. Driven by his need for acceptance, Jonah seeks out an older half brother who was given up for adoption at birth. Troy, a bartender and occasional marijuana dealer, has difficulties of his own: shortly after the disappearance of his wife, he is arrested and placed on probation and house arrest for drug dealing. He struggles to regain custody of his son, Loomis, a strangely intelligent and watchful boy, from his uncooperative mother-in-law and has little time for the hopeful Jonah. In what he intends as a gesture of brotherly friendship, Jonah kidnaps Loomis, meaning to take the boy to Troy. This desperate act ultimately leads to the dramatic yet real conclusion. A series of tightly interwoven flashbacks; deft handling of structure; and simple, precise language transform these characters' lives into a story that is highly readable, thought-provoking, and profoundly moving.-Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale

Copyright 2004 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2004
Chaon follows a ravishing short story collection, " Among the Missing" (2001), with a grimly compelling first novel about a fragmented family contending with poverty, tragic legacies, and severe depression. It begins with a self-possessed little boy named Jonah, who lives in Little Bow, South Dakota. His mother, who was forced, as an unwed teen, to give away her firstborn, is cruel, and her Doberman pinscher is vicious, eventually attacking Jonah and leaving him scarred for life both physically and psychologically. Now in his twenties, he's obsessed with finding his unknown half-brother. Meanwhile, Troy, a bartender in a small Nebraska town, is in crisis. Adopted as an infant by parents who soon divorce, he falls in with the town's druggies and marries one. She has disappeared, he has been arrested, and he is terrified that he'll lose custody of his son, the strangely watchful and solitary Loomis. Chaon's finely crafted novel is cogent and suspenseful, but it remains mired in its magnetic, unrelentingly troubled characters, rarely offering anything that transcends its meticulously realistic portrayal of battered lives.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)