Dan Chaon pronounced 'shawn' Await Your Reply
~ He believed him and he didn't. Both were true. He was a schizophrenic, and he was faking. He was a genius, and he had delusions of grandeur. good. then eh he was paranoid and ppl were out to get him but ok true enough.
such praise in the reviews, first in washington post I read, and the customer rvws at az. I didn't like it that much. interesting, not bad, but don't you guess that more than one of these guys is going to be the same - ? well maybe I would not have if was not expecting a reveal at the end, per the reviews. welll but it's about identity and the search for someone so.
and then my complaint is he does not seem crazy. only in Miles's recollections of his 'feverish obsessions' but not in any of the personas we see. he just seems an identity-con-artist, and maybe desperate in his wanting that one other person, the twin, the soulmate, but why not stick with Miles? who was his twin and did know & understand him specially?
I think You Remind Me of Me I liked better, but my recollection is vague, and my copy is not marked or folded, and mostly maybe it's the title that impressed me.

did not esp like Lorrie Moore Gate at the Stairs either. I thought of Michelle Wildren You're Not You (again, similarly, a title that drew me) where the couple that the college girl worked for was more interesting. especially the woman. in Gate, I never cared much or got a good feel for Sarah. or for Tassie the protagonist. I liked the little girl Mary-Emma, M-E, Emmie. but sure a two year old easy to like. and what happened in Wildgren's book more interesting, the effect on the protagonist. and why does Moore address me at the end 'Reader this much I learned in college' eh. oh *and* a representative complaint, she says Tassie's head was on fire with ~ names several authors ~ but I got no sense at all of that, no sense Tassie was caught up, impressed, learning, thinking.

I also did not get into the movie District 9 which everyone is praising but there I'll give that it's taste, what entertains you, I suppose the mockumentary style depiction of a segregated alien population is interesting, just the action did not interest me.