Alternately funny and heartbreaking, Dan Chaon's second collection is perhaps the most intelligent book to arrive this summer season. I highly recommend this book to readers of literary fiction. Among the Missing is a story collection not unlike Lorrie Moore's Birds of America. Both collections sustain throughout all their stories a cohesive sense of theme and atmosphere, but that having been said are neither repetitive nor uninteresting. Rather, Among the Missing is like a solid record album; every track(story) could be a hit, some songs are more danceable than others, but taken as a whole, it's a masterpiece.

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.

I am not typically a reader of short story collections, there are usually too many mediocre efforts thrown in with the odd good one. What a pleasant surprize to find a collection of superb short stories, no duds in the bunch. These are not happy tales, most of them are odd, unnerving and even disturbing. Something or someone is "missing" in each story. The reader is taken on a sometimes shocking, sometimes subtle ride through the secret thoughts and actions of it's characters. My personal favorites were, I demand to know where you're taking me, Among the missing and Here's a little something to remember me by. If you are a reader of short stories (or not), you will not be disappointed with this effort.

Chaon is a very capable author, one able to depict the pieces of regret, discomfort and deception that lie within us all. He revises the world through the eyes of his characters, exposing a landscape full of unresolved feelings and desperation. I read "Fitting Ends" in an anthology and have checked this book out as a result. It was well worth the trip, and far superior to the junk food on the shelves and bestseller lists posing as "literature." Check this book out. You won't be sorry.

Chaon is no mere sentimentalist, yet his stories chart probing flights over emotional landscapes of both the unusual and the everyday minutiae that comprise American life. This is a gifted writer, and his work is an honor to read. The title story captures better than any other the feeling of living "in the moment" and outside it at the same time, elaborating a lifeline that has suffered alienation and loss and redemption; journeyed to give you the story. While far and away the best piece in this collection, it does not by any means overshadow the other works published under this very appropriate title. Buy this book and read it carefully.

One story after another pushing emotional buttons as if by remote control, no needless sentimentality or displays of craven nostalgia, no explosions or easy gimmicks, the video-taped honeymoon notwithstanding, rather a series of deadpan heartbreaks and implosions. Necessary writing.