Among the Missing

June 11, 2001
In the 12 quietly accomplished stories of his second collection, Chaon explores the complicated geography of human relationships, from the unintentional failures and minute betrayals of daily existence to the numbing grief caused by abandonment, disappearance or death. Specific and disquieting absences—an uncle who killed himself, a mother who vanished, a friend who was kidnapped—haunt the protagonists, and a series of metaphoric and literal stand-ins take the place of what's missing. In "Safety Man," a dummy intended for crime deterrence—propped in the passenger seat, it looks like a male companion—becomes a kind of surrogate husband for a young widow, and for her daughters, an inflatable father; in "I Demand to Know Where You're Taking Me," a woman caring for her incarcerated brother-in-law's macaw comes to loathe the bird, its ugly talk transforming it into a symbol of everything wrong and incomprehensible about him. By and large, Chaon's characters are citizens of the emotional hinterlands, lonely even when surrounded: "How did people go about falling in love, getting married, having families, living their lives?" Even those who think they know the answers recognize their powerlessness, such as the father who, looking into his son's eyes, thinks, "I am aware that hatred is a definite possibility at the end of the long tunnel of parenthood, and I suspect that there is little one can do about it." And yet these stories are neither morbid nor even particularly melancholic. Singularly dedicated to an examination of all the profundity and strangeness of the quotidian, they are, in their best moments, unsettling, moving, even beautiful. (July 3)Forecast:A jacket blurb by Lorrie Moore and a five-city author tour may help sell this understated collection, which will be respectfully reviewed but may be overlooked on bookstore shelves.

March 1, 2001
Short stories don't usually get this much hype a two-page spread in the catalog, no less but Chaon has done well with his works: they have appeared in the "Distinguished Stories" section of The Pushcart Prize six times and in Best American Short Stories three times. These pieces focus on people just trying to get by in America today.

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2001
People go missing both literally and figuratively in Chaon's beautiful and insightful stories, most of which are set in small, muffled Midwest towns. In "Passengers, Remain Calm," 22-year-old Hollis, reflective and immensely kind, tries hard to let F. D., his 8-year-old nephew, know that he loves him without making F. D.'s father, who has inexplicably disappeared, look bad. Another expressive narrator is haunted by a long-held secret associated with the vanishing of his boyhood friend. As each of Chaon's profoundly thoughtful characters discovers, missing selves are just as distressing as missing people. A young father is astonished at how quickly he becomes a caricature dad, and he mourns the loss of his "real" self. In a curious reversal, the lonely boy in "Big Me" becomes obsessed with a boozy neighbor who, he fears, embodies his future. Riveting and unpredictable, each pristine tale of absence looms like the proverbial tip of the iceberg as Chaon succeeds brilliantly in suggesting the immensity and mystery floating silently below the surface of everyday life, shadowy compressions of all the complicated and contradictory thoughts and feelings that humans conceal from each other out of fear and love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)