by Joe Meno
ISBN: 9780393067965
I discovered Joe Meno earlier this year, reading Demons in the Spring and later on Bluebird Used to Croon in the Choir. Both are collection of short stories, which I loved.
Meno isn’t new to novel writing, though this most recent book is the first novel of his I’ve read. I was curious about what reading a novel set in the recent, painful, disturbing and now history of the Bush White House years would be like — it seems there are so very many ways it could go wrong. I almost didn’t want to see him tackle something I imagined would be so easy to screw up, because of all the ways Meno’s stories usually go right.
I find giant squid fascinating. Not to the keeping the real world at a distance degree that Jonathan Casper does, but still. I can imagine pouring all uncertainty into an obsession. So Jonathan has his squid, his wife has her strangely violent lab pigeons, his daughters have their religious freakouts and political schemes, and his dad tries to escape from the facility he’s in.
No risk, no reward. Meno risks in this novel — he examines a family trying to be functional in its own way, but of course failing as often as not, because that is what real families do. The Casper family isn’t all that likeable, either. One of the things this book is about, after all, is cowardice.
At four hundred pages, the book is roomier than the stories are. Room to wander and obsess and explore how the hell things are going wrong, and just maybe, how they could go right.
