Await Your Reply: A Novel (Random House Reader's Circle)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - In this "deliciously disturbing literary thriller" (People), the lives of three strangers interconnect in unforeseen ways--and with unexpected consequences--from the award-winning author of Among the Missing.

"A riveting thriller, chock-full of plot twists, and a sober meditation on the erosion of identity in the age of technology."--Los Angeles Times Book Review

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Miles Cheshire longs to get on with his life, but can't stop searching for his troubled twin brother, Hayden, who has been missing for ten years. Hayden has covered his tracks skillfully, moving stealthily from place to place, managing along the way to hold down various jobs and seem, to the people he meets, entirely normal. But some version of the truth is always concealed.

A few days after graduating from high school, Lucy Lattimore sneaks away from the small town of Pompey, Ohio, with her charismatic former history teacher. They arrive in Nebraska, in the middle of nowhere, at a long-deserted motel next to a dried-up reservoir, to figure out the next move on their path to a new life. But soon Lucy begins to feel quietly uneasy.

My whole life is a lie, thinks Ryan Schuyler, who has recently learned some shocking news. In response, he walks off the Northwestern University campus, hops on a bus, and breaks loose from his existence, which suddenly seems abstract and tenuous. Presumed dead, Ryan decides to remake himself--through unconventional and precarious means.

A literary masterwork with the momentum of a thriller, Await Your Reply is an unforgettable novel in which pasts are invented and reinvented and the future is both seductively uncharted and perilously unmoored.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, NPR, Salon, Entertainment Weekly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Kansas City Star, The Arizona Republic, Akron Beacon Journal, Lansing State Journal, The Week, Publishers Weekly

BUY THE BOOK

Published Jun 1, 2010

348 pages

Average rating: 6.14

7 RATINGS

|

Community Reviews

Mara M. Zonderman
Aug 01, 2023
8/10 stars
An interesting study on identity and identity theft, reading this book is kind of like putting together a puzzle. At the beginning, you're reading three separate (and interesting) stories. Slowly, it becomes clear that the stories all fit together, although it takes a bit longer for the connections to emerge. To complicate things, we are not given the story entirely in chronological order, making it sort of like putting together a 3-D puzzle. Unfortunately, the same effort put into drawing the puzzle pieces was not put into the actual resolution of the book, but a little bit of imagination on the reader's part takes care of that.
LiziB
Feb 23, 2023
6/10 stars
An entertaining read but not a great story... though I wasn't able to figure out the twist (and I hate when there's a twist), the main question was never answered: was he faking, or was he crazy?
Bini Rob
Aug 15, 2022
Book 4: Uhh... I hate it when I figure things out waaayyyy too early and then spend the whole book looking for my theories to change, but they don't, so I end up reading two hundred pages where I feel like I know what's going to happen, and I'm not wrong. I guess, for those that don't naturally put it together, it's a fun ride. The writing is not unpleasant. I felt Chaon created spaces in the book that I can still see four years later. I remember the spaces more than the characters, though.

See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.