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You remind me of this other book cover

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On Sunday, we reviewed the debut novel from Brian DeLeeuw, ‘In this Way I Was Saved.’ It’s the story of two boys -- one real, one less so. ‘Although he’s a constant presence, and couldn’t be more real or threatening to Luke, Daniel doesn’t exist in a form anyone but Luke can see,’ our reviewer Eryn Loeb writes, continuing:

Still, because the story is told from Daniel’s toxic, misanthropic point of view, he seems more vital than his pale, fumbling counterpart....

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DeLeeuw ably pulls off what seems at first to be a questionable conceit, with echoes of the destructive, delusional protagonists of Chuck Palahniuk’s ‘Fight Club,’ and that book’s attendant questions about masculinity and self-deception.

When I first saw ‘In This Way I Was Saved,’ I knew none of this. What I did know was that a shiny, empty pair of men’s shoes on a mottled, slightly golden surface seemed very familiar. And there it was: Dan Chaon’s ‘You Remind Me of Me.’

OK, they’re not exactly the same shoes. One pair has wingtip-style stitching; the other is more of a plain box-toed oxford. And while this might be Photoshop magic, one pair is smoking, while the other is knotted up.

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But they’re still really similar. And what’s odd is that the books are playing in somewhat similar territory. Questions of identity, creeping malevolence and a kind of dual self are also at play in Chaon’s marvelous ‘You Remind Me of Me.’

What’s with the empty dude shoes?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Images from Simon & Schuster, left, and Random House, right.

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