Valet Reader

Who am I? The proverbial question. The question that everyone (or at least I) ask myself quite often and really don’t have an answer to. Haha, fooled you, thought I was going to get all deep on you in this review didn’t ya? Well, I could cause it’d be quite easy to, but I’m tired of doing that. I feel like I’ve steered away from my original type of reviews (I feel like I’ve said that a lot recently). Luckily for me though, I watched an episode of the often disturbing, typically disgusting, expectantly controversial and downright humorous animated tv show South Park last night and received some inspiration.

In the episode I watched, titled “The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs,” the boys (Kyle, Stan, Cartman and Kenny) are told to read Catcher in the Rye for their class. When they learn about the controversy the book sparked, the boys, in their excitement, read the book in a single sitting. When they discover that the book offered no risque details or offensive material, they are flabbergasted and upset. In their angst, the boys decide to write the most horrid and controversial book ever, which they title “The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs.”

At the end of the episode, after much absurdity, the boys need to console their friend Butters for whom they bestowed credit upon for writing their book (i’d explain why he needs consoling but I don’t think it’s necessary). At which point Kyle tells him “We’ve all learned that people look for meaning in books and sometimes even if it isn’t even there they’ll try and invent their own meaning.” Whereby Stan continues and says “yeah, dude, that’s why we all need to avoid books and stick to television.”

By now you’re probably wondering what direction I’m trying to go in with this review. Well, here goes.

I really enjoyed Await Your Reply. Without giving too much away the book is actually composed of three distinct stories. The first one begins with a father taking his son to a hospital after the son’s hand has been severed. The second, with a high school student and her former history teacher absconding to an abandoned motel in Nebraska. And the third, with a man driving through the desolate arctic circle on a wild goose chase to find his twin brother.

Each story, I found, was gripping and thrilling. The way the book is laid out, with each corresponding chapter being one of the other stories and maintaining the 1,2,3,1,2,3 cycle, was fantastic. Each tale is gruesome and beguiling. The prose and the way in which Chaon morbidly crafts his descriptions is a pleasure to read.

What I have yet to mention is what the overall theme of the book is and how each of these stories relates to one another, cause you know at the back of your mind the whole time your reading it that there’s a commonality in there. As for the theme, I kind of made a brief reference to it at the beginning of this review and honestly I’m not going to get into. And as for the commonality, all I’ll say is that everyone and anyone is not who you always think they are. I can surely attest to the fact that this is very real in everyday life. I´ve been duped all too often and mostly by women. That´s not to say women are the only ones capable of doing so, but in my case it is. Note to self: do not let women dupe me into thinking they are someone who they are not and are actually interested in me. Second note to self: study Beat the Reaper and use as tool for avoiding dupers (yes, I do believe I´ve just created a new word).

You see, I cited the South Park episode at the beginning of this whole schpeel because I didn’t want to think about what is going on behind the scenes of this book. I didn’t want to “invent [my] own meaning.” Sure, there is definitely some themes in the book that you could pull out and extrapolate on. But, when I finished the book all I wanted to does was sit there and think about how the book ended, not what Chaon may have been trying to say about this or that. I wanted to be devoid of the deeper meaning and enjoy a good book for just being a book.

As for that bit about “avoid[ing] books and stick[ing] to television,” I decided to include cause I thought it was pretty funny.