Rating: 
Summary: You won't be disappointed!
Review: This bittersweet collection by Dan Chaon is an emotional collage of stories related only by theme: someone, or something, is missing. What these characters miss most is understanding of their lives and those of their loved ones. Parents, in particular, can be touched physically but never truly known because their private moments are too far out of reach. Sometimes the absence in these stories is real: a missing family ("Among the Missing) or an arm ("Prothesis"). Mostly, however, the gaping hole is more internal, such as the difficult reality forgotten by the odd, overly imaginative boy in "Big Me." In these stories, people are strangers to one another, even though they might live together or profoundly and unwittingly affect the course of one another's lives.Chaon uses uncomplicated language that disarms the reader with its simplicity. His prose is so undemanding on the surface that the emotion undercurrents can sneak up on you, such as in "The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Animal Kingdom" when the final line of the story gives us a glimpse of the desperation, loneliness, and incomprehension of the protagonist: "He could have sworn in his heart that something terrible had happened to the world, and that everyone knew it but him." If you are a reader of short fiction, you won't be disappointed with AMONG THE MISSING.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful works only get better
Review: This stunning collection of short stories have an awe-inspiring effect upon the reader. The sparseness of the prose and the subtlety of the writing makes it seem like a steady, smooth breeze.No one will walk away empty-handed from these stories. The book aspires to and achieves what great literature is: transformative.....
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