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You Remind Me Of Me
by Dan Chaon
Chaon explores the lives of members of what might have been a family, had a young teenage mother not given up her first child.
Ballantine Books, 368 pages
05/2004
$24.95
ISBN: 0345441419
Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Entertainment Weekly Tom Geier
In the end, Chaon provides his characters a commodity they seem unable to acquire for themselves: grace.
Houston Chronicle Logan Browning
Other comparisons come to mind, because [Chaon] comes as close as any writer has in a very long time to drawing forth from me every favorable cliché of book reviewing. Why? Because this novel renews my faith in the unique capacity of literature to help us understand and ultimately respect ourselves and the strange, baffling, complex figures we all can be.
Library Journal Christopher J. Korenowski
In his masterly first novel, Chaon tells an absorbing tale of fate and the struggle for recovery and human connection. His greatest strength is the ability to intertwine multiple stories while neatly showcasing the tangled threads of each character.
Publishers Weekly
Chaon's clarity of observation, expressed in restrained, nuanced prose, coupled with his compassion for his flawed characters, creates a heart-wrenching story.
The New York Times Book Review Sara Mosle
Chaon's achievement in ''You Remind Me of Me'' is to rescue his characters from oblivion and make their lives seem as real as our own.
Los Angeles Times Mark Rozzo
In this impressive intergenerational saga from onetime National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon, the modern American family is barely family at all: Its members are variously orphaned, abandoned or absentee. [27 June 2004, R10]
Chicago Tribune Laura Demanski
I still can't decide whether it is the happiest sad ending I've read lately, or the saddest happy one. In other words, it's a lot like life. [18 July 2004, C3]
Christian Science Monitor Ron Charles
You Remind Me of Me pulses with the emotional intensity his fans have come to expect.
USA Today Ellen Emry Heltzel
Theirs is a world anyone can recognize, a flat and unimaginative one, rescued from its doldrums by Chaon's sympathy, his ability to make the dialogue sing, a plot that keeps moving in spite of their desultory lives.
The Guardian Rachel Hore
Successfully negotiates the fine line between touching and slushy.
Flak Kristen Elde
Stylistically, the book is a hit; Chaon never misses a beat as he slides in and out of his characters' lives, favoring a deliberate back-forward-back approach over a simple chronological telling of events.
Booklist Donna Seaman
Chaon's finely crafted novel is cogent and suspenseful, but it remains mired in its magnetic, unrelentingly troubled characters, rarely offering anything that transcends its meticulously realistic portrayal of battered lives. [1 May 2004, p. 1544]
Kirkus Reviews
The symmetries and compensations here are a bit too tidy, and though his final vignette leaves the reader astonished once again, the larger satisfactions of mature plot-making remain elusive for this powerful, promising writer.
The Onion A.V. Club Scott Tobias
With deep sensitivity and insight, Chaon examines flawed, ill-fated outcasts who can't escape their own weaknesses. At times, the writing suffers from literary preciousness, particularly in the endless descriptions of Jonah's symbolic scar, but Chaon compensates with evocative passages about the inner and outer aridness of prairie life.
 The average user rating for this book is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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