In his newest story collection, Stay Awake, Dan Chaon isn’t interested in beginnings or endings. Instead, he stays focused on that ambiguous and terrifying middle. Most of the stories focus on people struggling to maintain their mental well-being, and consciously failing, in the face of descending insanity. From the opening story, “The Bees,” whose climax is still haunting me, all the way through to the end of the collection, these tales seem designed to make us feel uncomfortable and anxious. Chaon is remarkably successful in this. This is not a comfortable read by any means, but stories whose (lack of) resolution will stay with you a long time after reading them. Some say the short story is dead. Well, Chaon is proving them wrong with this collection, showing just how much power you can pack into a concise and succinct story, ripping the world from underneath the reader. - Danny