STAY AWAKE STORIES by Dan Chaon

This collection of powerful short stories are not what you think when conjuring up stories told around a campfire with the intent to scare someone.  But, these stories have a hypnotic hold on your psyche that manage to get under your skin.  Ghost stories are frightening for their supernatural, ephemral aberations.  These stories do contain, horrific deaths and human sufferings, the harshest of all being loneliness.  Dan Chaon is renowned for his evocative short stories and a Nat'l Book Award finalist for AMONG THE MISSING.  In STAY AWAKE STORIES there is a dark omniscience and feeling of detachment that leaves the reader an eerie feeling of solitude.  There are also stories where the main characters vie to free themselves of all entanglements.  Chaon writes "there are ghosts everywhere."  He is referring to all the lonely people, where do they all come from? He writes of the  pain in wanting to make connections where there are none.  The implausibilty of finding someone who offers understanding and compassion is so palpable I felt as though I stepped into a TWILIGHT ZONE episode in which I fell into Hopper's Nighthawks painting.