By Dan Chaon
336 pages; Ballantine

How hard could it be to lose yourself, to "let go of your future and let it rise up and up until finally you couldn't see it anymore, and you knew that you had to start over"? In Dan Chaon's new novel, Await Your Reply, a constellation of characters—Miles, vainly searching for his brilliantly deceptive twin brother, Hayden; Lucy, absconding with her charismatic high school teacher; and Ryan, a college dropout apprenticing in the arts of subterfuge—discover the fragile nature of human identity. A tender, melancholy meditation on attachment and loss.

— Cathleen Medwick