Fitting Ends

by Dan Chaon, Dan Smetanka (Editor)

Fitting Ends is the first collection of fiction by the acclaimed author of the National Book Award finalist Among the Missing and now appears in this newly revised edition with two never before collected stories.
 
Written before Among the Missing and originally published by Northwestern University Press, Fitting Ends features thirteen stories detailing the almost panicked angst of the American generation now approaching thirty.  Struggling with gaps between youthful expectations and adult experiences, these characters long for understanding and acceptance—but are thwarted by failed love, family disruptions, numbing work, and sexual confusion. 
 
Chaon is one of the most promising new voices in fiction, and this re-issued collection offers further evidence of his unique talent.

“The best of these stories . . . possess a rare, disorienting force. When you look up from them, the quality of light seems a little different. It’s a reminder to those of us who have almost forgotten what literature can sometimes do.”
—Boston Book Review

“The most honest, observant and timely book written this year about the American generation now approaching thirty . . . Chaon speaks with clarity of feeling, and more than a little oddball wit, about the lives of those left behind the demographic curve of America—men and woman with pointless jobs, doughy faces, soured relationships, bad credit. . . . Each story pulls you into its subtle emotional vortex, largely because of Chaon’s knack for simple but poignant detail.”
—New York Newsday

“Remarkable . . . Each story is a marvel of complexity, dense with meaning and nuance. . . . Very few first works are as solid, moving, and pitch-perfect as Chaon’s.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“[AN] OFTEN PERCEPTIVE, LUCID VOICE.”
—The New York Times Book Review

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Short Story Collection

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Dan Chaon is the author of Among the Missing, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and You Remind Me of Me, which was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, and Entertainment Weekly, among other publications. Chaon’s fiction has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction, and he was the recipient of the 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Chaon lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and teaches at Oberlin College, where he is the Pauline M. Delaney Professor of Creative Writing. His new novel, Await Your Reply, will be published in late August 2009.

Reviews

[Dustin the wind Crazy little brown owl · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point, " said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of things that Will be, or are they the shadows of things that May be, only?" - Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Relatable stories of midwestern landscape and reflection. Family dynamics, drama, questioning of circumstance.

I like that Chaon's writing leaves the reader at a door of decision and we have to try to figure out what happens next. My favorites are still Await Your Reply and Stay Awake, but I have also enjoyed reading You Remind Me of Me, Among the Missing, Ill Will and Sleepwalk. This edition of Fitting Ends has a nice interview Q&A section that is very illuminating.

My very favorite stories in this collection are: Going Out, Chinchilla, Thirteen Windows, Sure I Will and Accidents. Other favorites include:
Spirit Voices
Do You Know What I Mean?
Rapid Transit
Presentiment

Read in 2012, 2016 and 2025.
I consider Dan Chaon my favorite author and Await Your Reply my favorite book.

Favorite Passages:
My Sister's Honeymoon: A Videotape
I am one of those who can't help but see a relationship between style and soul.
___
Their minds wandered through miles and memories, associations, abstractions.
But all this has passed. It has evaporated, like steam or smoke, so that all that remains are atoms and molecules, untraceable and free floating, combining at last with other detritus to form dust, or rain. Who remembers what they were thinking twenty minutes ago? What was the last thing you thought before you fell asleep last night? Who knows what motivated a certain choice of words, or why the expression of a listener, a certain eye movement or flicker at the mouth, was interpreted in the way that it was? None of that remains.
___
"It is hard to see the point to most of what I'm doing. I have been told by several people that it is all attitude, that I seem like I would rather see the negative than the reasonably good things, but the truth is that when I look at a flower I would rather shove it down some certain people's throats than sit and contemplate how pretty it is . . . "
__
If this is happiness, I want no part of it.

Going Out
Scott's father has a glass eye. The father used to be a welder, and once, when he was drunk and not wearing goggles, a spark flew up and put his eye out. This story had always frightened Scott. He remembers being about five or six and staying at his father's place and waking up to go to the bathroom. The eye was laying there by the sink in a tiny box of what cotton. Scott imagined that it could see him. He pictured his father stretched out, sleeping, and thought of the empty socket. Whenever the father looked at him, the glass eye remained fixed. When the father was drunk, or hadn't showered, the eye would become encrusted with a dull gold mucus. Sometimes Scott's father embellished the story of the welding spark and told Scott that his eye had turned to jelly, which the doctors had dug out with a spoon.
___
They'd rented a boat, and he thinks of being out on the water, his father telling him that the lake had been made by a dam, and that at the deepest point, which at one time had been a valley, there had been a little town. And sometimes, his father told him, when the lake was very calm and clear, boats passing over could see the steeple of an old church down there under the water.
___
Once he's driving, his head starts to throb, and he can't stop himself from feeling that this day will mark an ending place. He stares ahead and can almost see his future in the distance, bearing down on him like dark weather.
___
He would like to be closed up, that's what he thinks: surrounded by brick and mortar; the mouth, the ears, the eyes stuffed with sawdust. He lies back, and it's then, through the stems of weeds and sunflowers, that he sees a bone-white face, bobbing in the dark, floating there, gazing with hollow eyes. His throat forms a gagging, voiceless cry, that superstitious sound familiar to him from horror movies, and for a moment he scrambles in the dirt in terror.

Spirit Voices
I wasn't sure what the difference was, between loving someone and thinking you do. It made me uncomfortable, puzzling over it, because it suggested layers of reality - what you thought was solid suddenly gave way, like a secret panel in a haunted house.
___
"My whole life is nothing but work and screaming kids and listening to you two gossip and complain. I'm so bored and tired of this same old thing that I could just jump out a window."
___
I used to check out this book at the library from time to time, Omens and Superstitions of the World, and I remember reading that if you imagine you hear music, then you are in the presence of benevolent spirits.
___
I don't know how long I stood there, staring at their reflection, but they didn't look up. I felt as if something large and dark were hovering over me, opening its wings.

Chinchilla
Years, later, Arlinda would come to hate her mother. She would eagerly and deliberately seek ways to hurt her, and there would be a time when she would slap her mother and watch those thick glasses fly to the floor and shatter. And it would be even more years later before she would pause to find herself using her mother's phrases and gestures, words, movement that had lain hidden inside her.
___
Her illness was as mysterious as the medicine that was meant to cure it - wrapped in tissue, hidden at the bottom of her mother's purse like little colored beads, or hoarded in unlabeled vials. once, Arlinda had found a nest of them in the crack of the couch, like little orange-and-yellow eggs. She had heard her mother saying their names in a whisper over the phone - Thorazine, codeine. They sounded like the names of cowgirls, or princesses. She had taken some of them, held them tightly in her dry hand, sure that no one had seen. Then, late at night, she'd studied them, found that the orange half separated from the yellow, and that there was a fine, bitter powder inside, which blew away as she drew near and breathed.
Her mother had come into her room later, demanding, "Were you digging around in that couch? Did you take some medicine?"
Arlinda denied everything, and not knowing what better to say, told her mother, "I saw Daddy! He was looking there."
Her mother's eyes narrowed. "When?" her mother demanded. "When?"
"I don't know!" Arlinda had cried, and her mother asked her more and more questions, until Arlinda began to believe her own lie, to defend it with tears and outrage, until it was hard to remember that she had taken them and buried them deep in the dirt of the jade plant in the kitchen.
But none of this was really a secret. Her mother had taken the pills and hidden them for as long as Arlinda could remember, it was a game played routinely, and the only secret was that she had stolen them that once. The real mysteries were shadowy, frightening - things she knew about her mother that could not be reconciled with what she saw.
___
The shadows of the trees shook and trembled against the walls, thin and crooked pantomimes of lurching figures, of people dancing. Beyond the wall, the sound of the chinchillas was like voices - tittering, whispering, telling secrets.
___
All Arlinda knew then was that, for a moment, she had the key to all those secrets.
She felt her mother's hands on her own, felt the softness of the chinchilla pressed against her palms. It was its shivering, it was the heaving of its lungs, it was the quick muffled beating of its terrible heart.

Thirteen Windows
A small dog comes in and stands on his hind legs, with his paws on the windowsill, his ears pricked up. He watches the cars passing on the street intently. Standing like that, the dog's body is reminiscent of a tiny, nude man.
___
Their next-door neighbor was a woman who may or may not have been crazy. They would see her from time to time in her backyard, wearing her nightgown and galoshes, filling a bird feeder with millet. She was in her late forties, apparently unmarried, childless, and she talked to herself. She kept a coop of pigeons in her living room, in a large chicken-wire cage that must have spanned the length of the wall, and in the morning Davis would see the birds flutter briefly past the frame of window. There were always to or three rising up for a moment, a convulsion of wings, and then stillness. All the other windows had their shades drawn.
Davis found this woman fascinating. She became a character in his consciousness, part of the landscape of his and his wife's early life as a couple. They would report unusual sightings to one another; the time the woman crawled out of her third-story window and walked around on her roof, hunched over, apparently looking for something specific; the time she spent hours in her front yard, decorating her scruffy bushes with tinsel and Christmas tree ornaments. Long after they had moved away, they continued to imitate her high, hysterical cries when one of the pigeons escaped inside her house. "No! No!" she would wail. "Come back! Come back!"
___
From time to time, he will see something that isn't there. He will appear to hallucinate - what? - a fast moving shadow, perhaps, or a globe of light, or sometimes a figure or a face. This has happened to him since he was small, and though it is always disturbing, he has come to accept it, the way others come to accept a nervous tic or an occasional hot flash. It is what happens he tells himself, to people who spend too much time looking out of windows, or into them.
What is it about windows that he finds so attractive? It seems to be no more than a habit, like any other, something that calms the spirit.
___
A darkened window is like a face that pretends it doesn't recognize you. There is something about it that is coy, and mysterious, and mean.
___
It is, he believes, a simple misfiring of his optical nerve, a dysfunctional synapse somewhere in his brain.
___
No, he does not think of these things as omens. What troubles him is that he's never quite certain of what he sees. Did he see a woman in a silver turban singing in a red car?

Fraternity
It seemed to Hap that all these memories were grotesque, like the old photos he'd found once in his basement at home, pictures half-eaten by silverfish.
___
"He's a new person now. And we have to love him in a different way than we used to. Not any less," she said. "Just different."


Transformations
CORKY PETERSEN AND SISTER MARY JOSEPHINE/ AFTER TEA DANCE PARTY
___
I wanted to tell them that my name was Todd, not Sleeping Beauty or Pumpkin. But all I said was, "Nope."
___
"I feel like a dancing dog," I said.

Sure I Will
I sometimes wondered whether I really was insane. There was a path I'd been on, a path that started when I was born and then moved along nicely - taking my first step, saying my first sentence, going to kindergarten, moving up grade levels; then I turned sixteen and I was able to drive, and then high school ended. There was a big chasm where the path should have been. That was the worst thing. And everyone thought I was weird when I told them this. Maybe I was.
___
Why does everybody care so much about the future? I never understood what made them think it would be better.

Accidents
But driving was like a fever. After school, he would leave St. Bonaventure in a rush, passing trailer courts and truck stops that were clustered on the edge of town, pushing past each changing speed zone sign, out toward the country. Everything took on a kind of jittery excitement - the skittish horses along the fence, nipping each other playfully; the sudden yellow green of the ditches and the shimmering green rows of winter wheat; even the ghostlike, uneasy stares of white-faced Hereford cattle
___
Everything was being drawn into sharp vertical and horizontal lines: the cut wheat met the uncut; the road met the field; the horizon met the sky.
Then the sky grew dark. Great blue-black clouds rose like smoke, up out of sight. The thunder boomed once. A breeze rushed across the stillness with a drawn-out hiss. The wheat rippled, seemed to fatten. The combines looked as if they were rising, roaring, like sea monsters from a yellow water. Far away, Charlie remembered seeing what looked like a gauzy curtain billowing toward him; but before he could move, the hard rain and then the hail began hitting him - and then he was running, covering his head at first but then just holding his head up and squinting his eyes, laughing - there he was, he could remember the feeling, out there alone, the world moving fast, almost out of control.
___
Sometimes, it was hard to imagine the world beyond except as lines upon lines, the rim of sky underlining the flat stretch of horizon.
___
Some days, he wished he was going away, not driving off to school again, but out onto the interstate, headed off toward one of those points, or all of them.
____
His father always called him Charlie-O or some other nickname. There were dozens of them - Chip, Chas, Charles, Broadsides (after he started wrecking his car), Chally, Char, names that no one but his father called him. Sometimes Charlie thought it was because his father really wished that he were a different person; by calling him by a different name, he could somehow change Charlie himself.
____
Count your blessings, his father advised, and Charlie, by this time so worked up that he wasn't even afraid of his father or worried that his father would suddenly quit loving him, looked into his father's face and counted each blessing: "Zero," he said. Then he got up and walked out.

Do You Know What I Mean?
He had always tried to think of it like this: he'd come across a doe in the clearing of a forest, and it was still, it's hide shivering, its ears pricked up; any sudden movement would cause it to bolt. Only the most subtle, graceful approach would allow him to step closer, to put out a hand. And then? He didn't know.
___
Great Spirit
Teach me to criticize another man not
Until I have walked a mile
In his moccasins!
___
And when he called his parents, his adoptive parents, he could sense it, moving beneath the talk of health and weather like a fish below ice. He spoke into the hiss of long distance, imagining that his words disintegrated to travel through the wire and then came together at the other end, but not in the same pattern. Who knew what they would hear him say?
____
For a long while he just stood there in the glass box, his hand on the phone. As he watched, the lines of wheel tracks, the dots of footprints casually disappeared in the accumulating snow. His hands felt disembodied when he dialed the number.

Rapid Transit
His smile was broad and simple. He looked, people told him, like he was from Nebraska.
____
"We can't have clients coming in here and seeing you like this. You look like 'Welcome to My Car Accident.'"
____
He curled himself up into this new life as a hermit crab might ease itself into a conch.
____
Minutes and words began to melt into one another with the hallucinatory tedium of a lava lamp.
____
That afternoon, he'd gone to the supply closet. He did this usually once or twice a week, and if he was lucky, he would kill almost an hour collecting fine-point felt pens and stationery, Post-it notes and erasers. It was very peaceful.
No one seemed to wonder where he was. He always left his desk in a bit of clutter, as if he'd be returning any minute; but no one, not even Dugan, mentioned it. It reminded him of a spooky television program he'd once seen, where a man went about his business for days and days before he finally realized that people weren't noticing him because he was dead. A ghost.
____
Once, he'd told someone about the time he had worms as a child. It had seemed comical in his head, but afterward, when he was alone, he was so filled with disgust at himself that he'd struck his idiot mouth with his fist, making it bleed.
____
"You know what's weird," she said. "You're not who you think you are."

Presentiment
So on Friday night he said, "Are we still going to Denver tomorrow/"
She was in bed, with the comforter pulled up to her chin, reading a book. He had been downstairs, watching music videos on TV and drinking beer. He felt heavy and thickheaded with loud music and alcohol.
She looked up. "I wasn't planning not to go," she said.
"Oh," he said. It took him a moment to sort this out: Not planning not to go, he thought. Wasn't no planning to go. Wasn't planning to go not. Why couldn't she just answer yes or no?
"What does that mean?" he said.
____
The next morning, it was raining, very gloomy. The shapes of the world had been turned to smudges, as if they were being erased, and passing cars spat thick mist as they drove.
____
He had been in the habit of taking some sort of drug when he visited Erik - a little MDMA, if he could get it, or some sort of mild amphetamine. He had taken two pills that morning, little lozenges shaped like pink hearts, but he didn't feel very perked by them. Once, while peaking on Ecstasy, he'd actually taken the stiff, vacant child into his arms and crooned a song from his childhood. "This little light of mine," he sang. "I'm going to let it shine." He felt visionary, filled with love.
___
When he looked back up, he half expected to see something on the roadside - an ominous hitchhiker, perhaps, with a flapping black overcoat; or a walleyed animal, frozen and staring as he bore down on it . . .
____
The last time they'd visited, Rich had been on Ecstasy. He'd been cheerful, gentle, fatherly - a model parent. No one would have guessed that he was on drugs.
____
The sound was almost visible . . .
____
"But it's more like a psychic moment. We all have them. But it's not something we can control, of course, not most of us. It's just that, suddenly, he's in our world - snap, like that - in the same way that when you get a deja vu, you're in another world for a minute. That's what I think, at least."

Fitting Ends
. . . my father said that ever since I started junior high school I'd been like a "-holic" of some sort, addicted to making an ass out of myself.
___
. . . there was always the possibility that this was the last time. There was always the hope that everything would be better, now.
____
"Eat shit and die, Stewart," he murmured, without heat. Unfortunately, I believe that this was the last thing he ever said to me.
____
He and I stepped out into the thick night air, seeing the shape of the elevator in the distance, above the tall sunflowers and pigweed. And though we knew we were outdoors, it felt like we were inside something. The sky seemed to close down on us like the lid of a box.

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fine collection of stories by a young writer whose intuitive grasp of life's ambiguities combines with a well-developed storytelling ability to give the reader much to enjoy and ruminate on. Mostly set in a small town in western Nebraska, these stories have youthful protagonists who are often at a loss or are simply lost. Their lives have veered off course, somehow, or gone into a stall, and they're like the recovering young alcoholic in "Going Out," who is sober but bewildered, losing ground, finally walking down a dark country road in his boxer shorts, startled by the ghostly face of a curious cow.

There is the mystery of identity that runs through many of these stories, from the young man in the first story "My Sister's Honeymoon: A Videotape," who ponders his sister's personality change when she gets married, to the high school student in "Transformations," whose older brother has revealed himself as not only gay but a female impersonator. In "Fraternity," a young man discovers that a fraternity brother injured in a car accident is no longer the person he once was. A girlfriend in "Rapid Transit" tells a young office worker, "You're not who you think you are."

Meanwhile children struggle to understand their parents. In two stories, the mothers have histories of mental illness. In another, the title story, a young man puzzles over a wayward older brother whose life seems to take a fatal turn after the telling of a lie. The richness of how circumstance alters and often diminishes identity is particularly well drawn in this story. The protagonist, on a visit home, reflects on how the loose threads of lives may come together for a moment in the mind's eye or the heart, like the neat ending of a short story, but because life is not art they unravel again.

While all this may sound a bit bleak, it is not. The stories leave you with uncertainties about the characters, whose lives are often tentative and touched with unresolved regrets, but there is a lightness and a degree of irony about them that make their ambiguities linger afterward in a way that's nicely gratifying. For another collection of well-written stories with a rural setting, I recommend Kent Meyers' "Light in the Crossing." Also, set in a small town not far from Chaon's fictional St. Bonaventure, Nebraska, there's Kent Haruf's fine novel, "Plainsong."

[Anya Weber · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could only get through a few of these depressing stories. I love Dan Chaon and his other short fiction collection, Among the Missing. This earlier collection is not as effective as his later work.

[Yanique Gillana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a GREAT first book of this author's career.

It's hard to write reviews for books like these; collections of short stories, but I'll try.

This book touched me so deeply and was such an accurate representation of people in my age group. The stories touched on family relationships and friendships, and the feelings of confusion, hopelessness, disappointment, and depression that so many young adults battle with daily. The characters felt so real, and I was able to form connections to them and become invested almost immediately. This is a good thing because there is not much time to be spent with characters in a short story. I found the stories Transformations , Accidents , and Fitting Ends to be particularly emotional.

The writing in this story was wonderful and matched perfectly with the style of story telling (an important thing for me as a reader), and had the ease and flow that I've come to expect form Dan Chaon. The characters came alive on the page, the settings were vivid, and the stories were completely immersive and effective in their brevity. I loved this collection and recommend it to fans of short story collections and emotional works.

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

These thirteen stories, set mostly on the outskirts of Denver or in the small fictional (I think) town of St. Bonventure, have a wide range, but pessimism runs through them all, along with the inexplicability of what constitutes love, or what plans to make for one's life. The young characters are often dealing with a parent's mental illness or alcoholism, each responding differently. Several of the characters try to break from their small-town roots which leaves them in conflict with those they've left behind. Ghosts and other visions sometimes appear too, perhaps as a memory of a character's past self. Each story ends on the edge of a moment, leaving the reader to decide what the future holds for that particular character. Compelling and effective.

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thirteen short stories told by the master...most of them taking place in Nebraska or other desolate and lonely areas of our country. Each has a dark, eerie, nothing-good-can-come-of-this feeling; a suspense hanging over the characters and their circumstances. And what circumstances.....

A young man can't help but notice how much his sister's personality has changed since she got married. Another boy graduating high school discovered things about his older brother who now lives in New York. A fraternity brother who is injured and will never be the same person again.

Just to name a few...

Each story revolves around families and sad situations. These situations are often attributed to the use of drugs and booze. Most of the families are dysfunctional and sad; you can't help but feel for them.

Only Chaon can pull this off with his EXCELLENT writing. He always makes me want MORE. He is certainly a force to be reckoned with.

[Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved these stories as Chanon wastes no time in developing the central tensions of the story between characters. These are stories whose central tensions can at once evoke “I know what it’s like to be in those shoes” feelings along side the grateful nod that I’m not.

[Naomi]

DNF. This is the author’s earliest work, and he has gotten much better.

[Leo Rodriguez · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't realize I had not read this until I picked up Sleepwalk. But I've loved everything else Dan Chaon has written--including aforementioned Sleepwalk--so I hurried to pick up a copy.

These stories fell short when stacked against his other work; they were distant, in my opinion, and ineffective. Not nearly as inventive as his later writing. Which is okay once I realized this was chronologically his first collection, but I'm definitely glad I came to this after happily enjoying everything else.

The writing is good, as is to be expected. But again, these felt like something of a discard pile, and for anyone interested in his work, I highly suggest starting with Among the Missing or Stay Awake.
Noting this collection was published back in 1995, I still couldn't help but feel a dull indifference when I came to the story about a character who moved to New York and dropped out of school to become an actor and work at a bar/dress in drag. It felt particularly dated.

[Carolyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very disappointed in this book; I am a big fan of Dan Chaon and could never find this book at the library, so ordered it online. His other short stories I enjoyed, but these to me were disjointed and ended too abruptly, leaving me thinking "what the heck was that all about and why?". Each story was just an ordinary day for an ordinary person, with no extra drama, no real storylines, etc. Again, disappointed.

[Jeanie Zwick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started out with Chaon's novel, "Await your Reply" and loved it, so I was thrilled to try out some of his short stories. However, I just couldn't get into the stories in this collection...the characters seemed very flat and one-dimensional compared to the ones he featured in his novel. Not what I was expecting.

[Meg · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a dedicated Chaon fan, I read it, but it wasn't nearly as good as his other work.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was Chaon's first collection of short stories and it shows. If you haven't read him, I'd recommend picking up "Among the Missing" first.

[Adria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I love Chaon, I didn't find this short story collection as good as his other material. Still good depressing characters, but I wasn't as intrigued as with his other works.

[Deborah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't 'get' any of these stories -- the stories were good until the end. Maybe you'll understand them -- they just END - ?

ugh

[Joe Silber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well-written, character-driven collection of short stories, but very unhappy. Not a single character in these stories was happy, as far as I can recall. I struggled to remember the details of any story afterward, but the mood, the feelings they evoked were very vivid. Many of them have a vague feeling of dread, like a horror story, as if you are waiting for something terrible to happen. Thematically, the stories all fit well together. Mostly lacking traditional plots, these stories feature broken or at least emotionally isolated people who have poor relationships with family and loved ones (often, addiction or poor decisions are involved), who are trying to make things better and realizing that it is too late. This description makes the stories sound both dreary and perhaps predictable or boring, but they are vivid and engaging and not unpredictable. Often, they end before you expect them to. They are perhaps best experienced in small doses (I rarely read more than 1 or 2 before needing a break). Recommended if you are in the mood for emotionally heavy, well-written stuff but not up for anything too long.

[Claire Arbogast · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well written, but it didn't grab me or talk to me while I wasn't reading it, although it also didn't bore me while reading. Maybe I'm not a short story person.

Here's a good quote: “The argument continued in this unpleasant vein for some time, and never came to any satisfactory conclusion. An edge of bitterness lingered the next day, and the day after, leaving a vague film over their ordinary conversations and day-to-day activities. This bothered him more than her, he felt. Unresolved troubles were like a disease, fingering their hideous anxiety through his physical person, discoloring his work day, prodding him piteously when he lay down to sleep.“

[Ronald Owens · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was an interesting look into our lives 30 years ago but I wanted more of their stories. It left you hanging without any clear resolution of where they were going to be in the future. Even though you did get some hints. If I had read the book 30 years ago, I think I would have felt more challenged by it and viewed each story as hope or desperation. I would have taken away some direction for my challenges. I don't think it holds very much meaning for today's 30 somethings. The book left me wanting.

[Debra B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked these stories, but not as much as I liked the stories in the author's subsequent book, "Among The Missing". The reason for this is probably because this book contained his earlier work, and he had not yet become a seasoned writer. I liked some stories better than others. Often, I was not satisfied with the endings to these stories. I did enjoy the author interview at the end of the book. I found that interview illuminating.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book 2 in my inadvertent Chaon-a-thon. These weren't my favorite stories of Chaon's, and the ones I really loved toyed with horror--moments of violence or profound discomfort, tragedies and our human, meaner reactions to them. To quote the Boston Book Review "there is something about the free-floating anxiety of these stories that transcends the chronological age." Apprehensive and unsettling.

[Carlos Rivera · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth reading. Not my normal style to read, but changing it up every once in a while can't hurt. A collection of short stories that have no real connection, but all seem connected in a way that is honestly quite impressive. A good book to read a week you have other stuff going on, but can sit down to read 10-20 pages at a time

[Judy Uckotter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Might be a good book for some, I don't know. All I know is I got a few pages into the second story and quit. I checked the description for this book and cannot for the life of me figure out why I decided to buy it. Sorry, but just not interested. I need something that grabs me at the very beginning and holds me to the end.

[Michael Van Kerckhove · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of shorts stories I had the pleasure of reading between everything else I put in front of my eyeballs this fall. I'm a fan of Chaon's work for sure. Faves include Transformations, Do You Know What I Mean?, and Fittings Ends.

[Hanna Munin · Rating 4 out of 5]

85% of the short stories were 💯. I’d say 2 of them were snoozers. Overall, enjoyable read

[Waco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun read

[Grant Cousineau · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Chaon's first book, I came into this with lowered expectations, and yet I found it difficult not to compare this book to all Chaon's others, which I greatly enjoyed. It didn't have the psychological instability of Among the Missing or the plot complexities of his novels. However, I found some stories more difficult to stick with, clearly feeling that young, college-educated writer rear its head repeatedly throughout. The stories were well-layered and the characters were richly deep, though there was just that seasoning of pretension in the way the stories did more exploring than defining. Not that that's a bad thing, but all his later books find a better balance, where you walk away knowing exactly what you ought to know. (In the interview, Chaon admitted that he often leans toward ambiguous endings much in the way the classic short story "The Lady and the Tiger" once did.) That said, by the end, I was still greatly satisfied. The self-titled story had to be my favorite, probably because as the longest, we got to really see this un-admirable brother's journey from turning an adolescent, self-preserving lie into a soul-crushing moment for an entire family, one he never fully relinquishes. There were a number of clearly unlikable protagonists that I actually understood quite well, and could almost sympathize with, in that they were caught under the weight of their own trappings. There was so much to love here, though in the end, it was still just a really good book with a few stories I didn't connect with as well as I would have hoped. If this is your first Chaon book, remember that this is merely where his career started.

[Sheri · Rating 2 out of 5]

First off, I just want to say that as a rule I don't like short stories. I'm a fairly quick reader and usually finish an average length (250 page or so) novel in about 48 hours. I find books of short stories annoying and unsatisfactory; every 15-30 minutes we have to start afresh with new characters/plot/etc. I mention this because part of my low rating is simply because this is a book of short stories and I am admitting my bias (I think even a great book of stories would probably only rank a 4 star rating from me). (Somewhat) paradoxically, the other reason for my low rating is that these stories were all so similar that at times I felt like I was re-reading the same story over and over.

The writing is well done and he has some great passages, but the characters are not really distinct between stories. They are all small town Nebraskans (several of them from the same town), but unlike other collections with distinct personalities who (sometimes) interact, these characters all live within the vacuum of their own story despite the similiarities among them.

We have the incestuous theme and the rejected/abandoned sibling wishing they had not been left behind in My Sister's Honeymoon, Transformations, and Fitting Ends.

Scott from Going Out and Hap in Fraternity are both college burnouts; Hap also is plagued with the car accident (as is Charlie in Accidents) and Scott, Charlie and Arlina have absent (either dead, insane, or drugged) mothers.

Spirit Voices and Rapid Transit were both about older guys who feel like schmucks for letting someone steal from them; in Spirit Voices the main character seems to come to grips with his life, while Alan in Rapid Transit just comes across as a psycho. 13 Windows and Do You Know What I mean were a bit different, but these were the least powerful and I thought lacking Chaon's commentary.

Overall I was unimpressed.

[Bill Breedlove · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of "early" fiction by Dan Chaon, the version I have has a different cover and the title is "Fitting Ends and Other Stories" published by Triquarterly Books--an imprint of Northwestern University. These thirteen stories show Mr. Chaon as an already wonderful storyteller, who is coming into his stride as a master of the short story form. Each of these stories is extremely well done, and, as would be expected, the protagonists in many of them are younger folks than in his subsequent collection STAY AWAKE. Many of them are drifting in life, in a kind of holding pattern until something (usually the events in the story) changes that. I would not call these stories "bleak" but they do not seem to favor the trite, "happy ending." I would use the analogy of if you liked a certain rock band, and discovered they had an early record in their career--you can hear the group they would become that you enjoy, but it is also somewhat different. Fans of his later collection and I AWAIT YOUR REPLY and YOU REMIND ME OF ME will find plenty here to like. For those just discovering Mr. Chaon's work, this is a fine place to start.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazing book of short stories. Chaon's prose has the quality of floating. I really don't know how else to describe it. Only a few feel uneven but the last three stories back such an emotional punch, it's hard to fault earlier parts of the book. "Fitting Ends" is one of the best stories I've read in a long time. I was at Barnes and Noble Saturday, reading it, and when I finished, I almost started crying, right then and there. Erik Campbell told me about this guy, and I'm so glad he did. He makes me want to write! I just picked up his novel and hope to read it soon.

[Kendall]

Nice collection of stories by Dan Chaon. Not as polished as his latest collection (Among the Missing) but still masterful insights into the human psyche. Commanding style. Chaon never seems to falter where language is concerned. The stories didn't get inside my head like the later collection- but enjoyable non the less. This collection of stories is reminiscent of Yates's short stories. The same sort of direct language and gritty no-nonsense feel.