My review on Amazon
I absolutely loved this book. Dan Chaon sure hit a home run with this one.
The story is essentially three storylines that are seemingly unrelated. The first story is about Ryan and his father, Jay. The book opens with Jay promising Ryan that he won't let him bleed to death, as Ryan sits next to his severed arm that's stored in a Styrofoam cooler.
This is where you're totally hooked--right from the get-go.
The second story is about Miles Cheshire who has been obsessed with finding his schizophrenic twin brother, Hayden, who disappeared when they were teens. He kept looking for his brother for years and when he finally decided to give up the search and move on with his life, he receives a letter from Hayden crying for help.
The third story is about Lucy and her lover, George Orson, who also happens to be her high school history teacher. Lucy and George run away from Pompey, Ohio, the day after Lucy graduates high school. They take off in Orson's Maserati and head West. Orson promised Lucy a bright future filled with endless luxuries and she believed him. Who wouldn't? He drove a Maserati.
The overarching story, however, is identity theft in the age of electronic banking and online shopping. The book tries to draw a distinction between a spirit and its identity. What makes you who you are today? Is it your passport? Your birth certificate? Your relationships? Your memories?
I have to say I didn't see the final reveal coming, which is a sign of an original story. The writing is fluid and easy and the characters are very well developed. What I loved most about this book was the question it kept raising, which can only be expressed by Emily Dickinson's succinct poem:
I'm nobody, who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
I love this book and I dare to say that you'll love it too.
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