You Remind Me of Me
Book | Dan Chaon
A Midwestern epic depicting the reconnection of two brothers separated by adoption.
With You Remind Me of Me, Dan Chaon establishes a new subgenre: RV Gothic. A modern epic staged in the trailer parks and moldy efficiency apartments of the decaying Midwest, it follows two brothers separated by adoption. Troy, who was given up by their troubled mother, struggles for custody of his own young son after police bust him on drug charges. Jonah, who was kept but suffers a traumatic canine attack as a child, searches as an adult for Troy. The none-too-subtle biblical and mythological allusions don't end with the two protagonists' names. Jonah even quotes the Old Testament over dinner. Heavy-handed? Yes, but the ambitious scope of Chaon's tale of fate and the pursuit of identity warrants these dramatic flourishes. The novel offers no relief from its relentless melancholy, and yet this seems fitting for a story whose characters are trapped by loneliness and self-doubt. Chaon renders these feelings so skillfully and empathetically that readers may indeed be reminded of themselves—or at least reminded to take their Zoloft.
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