You Remind Me of Me

Omg

This book made me fall in love i love this book you need to get it.

Great

This book had me at page 1! Very well written, very good:)

EXCELLENT

I loved this book from the very first page! Excellent read

A good, entertaining story-

I like this book. It was a bunch of stories all separate that come together. It is entertaining to see how everyone in the book connects in some way. This book is a series of different events and incidents. A boy is attacked by a dog, a boy disappears from his grandmother's home, a pregnant teen admits herself into a maternity home. This book is interesting- everyone connects and the stories end up interweaving which makes it fun and you think how your life might touch others too.

Really, really good

I picked this book up in the "Staff Recommended" section at my local library and am so glad I did! This was a well-written, engaging story and I look forward to reading more books by this author. One of the opening scenes has stayed with me: the protagonist and his family dog, Elizabeth the Doberman. I was surprised throughout by how much I liked this writer's style. A very touching story. You may also enjoy: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the novels of Morag Joss, anything by Barbara Vine(especially A Fatal Inversion, A Dark-Adapted Eye, the Brimstone Wedding and Anna's Book), and anything by Ruth Rendell (especially End in Tears).

A powerful story about simple people and their complicated lives

In the initial chapters I wasn't sure about the author's style of jumping back and forth across timelines and seemingly unrelated characters. In the end that narration style was the high-point of this book. I loved the fact that each of the characters were at the outset simple, one-dimensional....but as you got to know them the complexities of their situations made them real and endearing. He has also done due justice to every single one of the characters.

A lover of quirky, unforgettable characters, this novel was a fantastic read.

I was immediately drawn in by the book's title and cover photo, both oddly compelling. The author's intense, descriptive writing grabs the reader by his neck hairs, but you will not want to let go. Such an interesting array of characters and an intricate weaving of lives, like a big dish of 'heart and soul' served right to your kitchen table. Dan Chaon has a wonderful ability to convey the deepest of thoughts and emotions in the fewest of words. A sad, reflective, and weirdly funny novel, simple but profound. I will be hard pressed to forget Troy, Jonah and Loomis anytime soon.

Tremendous

i was in B&N and i wanted to find a new book. i picked this up and sat down and started reading. I could not stop. i read about 60 pages in the store and i immediatly purchased the book and went home to read some more. I could not put it down. It was one of the most interesting and calm stories i have ever read. the characters are so real. you believe every action and every word.'You Remind Me of Me' is a fantastic story. i think anyone that enjoys to read would truly love this book.

WOW!

I took a chance on this book as I'd only read one short story of Dan Chaon's before (in The O'Henry Prize Stories). I couldn't put this book down. Brilliantly written, so in touch with humanity, all of its beauty and darkness. The best book I've read this year (and I've read a lot). Do yourself a favor and read this fine piece of literature.

A worthy read!

I fell in love with this book from the beginning, and it surprised me almost at every turn, despite the obvious mythical connotations (and foretellings) of the characters' names (Johah and Troy). I haven't read Dan Chaon's stories yet, but I will now. YOU REMIND ME OF ME actually reminded me of me, of my own family, and it reminded me of A SECRET WORD, a novel I read not long ago by another first-time novelist, Jennifer Paddock, who covers the very similar territory of lost or searching lives. For what it's worth, I recommend both.

A Meditaton on Life, Death, and the Meaning of it All

Everything promised in Dan Chaon's short stories in the cherished AMONG THE MISSING collection comes to full fruition in this incandescent novel YOU REMIND ME OF ME. Without question Dan Chaon is emerging as one of the more important writers of the 21st Century, so gifted is he at creating unique characters and then guiding them through the crusty terrain of the earth in search of the meaning of existence. He is a consummate storyteller, a master of the English language, and a social observer along the lines of the greatest thinking writers of the last century. YOU REMIND ME OF ME, significantly distilled, is the story of two men who share the same biological mother Nora, a woman so fragile that at age 16 she gives the first born son (Troy) for adoption, never marries, keeps her next son (Jonah) born four years later, only to descend into mental illness and guilt of her actions with her first born son and the disaster of her second born being mauled to death by her dog, reviving as though resurrected to a life of physical distortion and loneliness. Thus separated by Nora's decisions, the two boys grow into adulthood without significant direction: Jonah fears relationships because of his physical scarring creating a self concept of appearing a beast and spends his youth as a loner, while Troy's adoptive parents disintegrate, allowing him to bond with a young couple who introduce him to the life of drugs, and his downward swirl ends in a life as a bartender, divorced from a junkie wife and left with a son (Loomis). Jonah longs for the 'brother' he never knew and after Nora's suicide he strikes out to find his only blood relative. All of this happens on the plains of middle America - St. Bonaventure, Nebraska and Little Bow, South Dakota - and Dan Chaon knows these vast stretches of lonely terrain and the isolation of small prairie towns well. He uses the places like a stretched sheet over a morgue bench to dissect the fragile lives of his characters and the folk who populate these spaces. It seems as though reducing the matrix of the novel to such places erases the distractions of life so that he can meditate on the important things. 'The true terror, Jonah thought, the true mystery of life was not that we all are going to die, but that we were all born, that we were all once little babies like this, unknowing and slowly reeling in the world, gathering it loop by loop like a ball of string. The true terror was that we once didn't exist, and then, through no fault of our own, we had to.' And the thoughts come not only from the young men but from the life experiences of the elderly, such as Judy - the grandmother of Troy's son Loomis: ' She is aware of herself dividing. There is a reasonable self, floating above her perception, a practical mind that observes the sensual organism. She is aware of herself as muscle and fat wrapped in a damp skin, aware of herself as a dry, yellow-tasting tongue, aware of the matrix of sounds that spreads out from the center point of her body, the interstate of blood moving, the grasping tendrils of the spirit, seeking purchase.' The story progresses to Jonah's finding Troy, desperately seeking connection to someone, finding that connection through distorted lies about his life that promise a bond with Troy, and the manner in which the earlier referenced 'baby' (Loomis) provides that bond is the odd resolution of this engrossing tale. Jonah's desperate need to connect with Troy finds words from a inebriate mouth: 'People seem to think it's all either nature or nurture, or some combination, but you know what? I think it's even worse than that. It's all...random. It's all chaos and luck and whether you're like...stupid and cowlike, like YOU, or else you have some inkling of how deluded it all is.' These searchings for meaning close the book in a flashback to the time when Nora was in labor with Jonah: 'It's hard to believe that this is how it's done. That this is how we get here into the world, by

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