Stay Awake, by Dan Chaon

Dan Chaon has rapidly become one of my favorite writers. I honestly do not think I have read a better or more disturbing thriller than Ill Will. Another novel, Among the Missing, is almost as good. Last year I read a Dan Chaon short story collection called Fitting Ends, and I liked it a lot.

Now I've read another Dan Chaon collection. Stay Awake is a loosely themed book of short stories. These tales are bleak. I'm talking hopeless, dark, abject misery. People living somnambulant lives of regret, trauma, insanity.

You won't find Stay Awake in any horror section, but it would be difficult to find more disturbing fiction. The stories are mostly snippets of lives. People whose minds have betrayed them. Whose poor choices or bad fortune left them with nightmare existences and little chance of waking to fulfilled lives. Reality itself is often distorted and terrifying to them.

You'd also be hard pressed to find better writing. Chaon isn't so much a stylist as he is a hard realist. The thoughts of his characters may be deceiving, but the hard truth of their lives is cold and harshly real.

I normally don't mind slice-of-life fiction, and I did like Stay Awake, but the book grew oppressive by the final story. I began to crave beginnings, middles, and ends, with genuine conclusions. At least in a few of the pieces. A ray or two of light might have been welcome, too.

Dan Chaon is a brilliant writer, and I look forward to more of his fiction, but I probably would have benefited by reading Stay Awake in increments, rather than straight through. This is a really good book, but not one I would recommend to those who have not read him. Go with Ill Will, but for God's sake be ready to have your blood turn cold.

Written by Mark Sieber