Reviews
"The wisest, most humane and transcendent novel on the contemporary family since . . . . A marvelous book." -- Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting "Meno masterfully, and meaningfully, conflates the fantastic with the everyday. . . . Tender, funny, spooky, and gripping." -- Donna Seaman (Booklist) "A darkly funny, lyrical, and shrewdly observant chronicle of a family on the verge of a nervous breakdown." -- Tom Perrotta, author of The Abstinence Teacher "Meno is thinking hard about why the world is the way it is and about where hope for change might reasonably lie." -- Jonathan Dee (New York Times Book Review), Meno's writing seems to have hit a new gear...The overall effect is one of mature mastery of form and a deepened compassion for his characters., The Great Perhaps is a darkly funny, lyrical, and shrewdly observant chronicle of a family on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Joe Meno has the rare ability to evoke mid-life melancholy and teenage angst with equal authority., Tender, funny, spooky, and gripping, Meno's novel encompasses a subtle yet devastating critique of war; sensitively traces the ripple effect of a dark legacy of nebulousness, guilt, and fear; and evokes both heartache and wonder., A terrible fear of clouds, an obscure search for giant squid and a bomb-building teenage girl: Joe Meno has imagination, humor and the rare ability to make characters seem as near as your own family--sometimes almost too close for comfort. An intriguing and heartfelt book., "There's an old adage in theater to "make 'em laugh before you make 'em cry." In his previous four novels and two story collections (e.g., Hairstyles of the Damned), Meno has demonstrated a rare ability to do so not just once but continually over the course of a story, and he manages to do it again....The text contains more elements of magical realism than Meno's previous work, yet even the human-shaped cloud that Madeline chases for weeks somehow seems real thanks to the note-perfect dialog and narrative.", Laugh-out-loud funny but frequently sad, Joe Meno's new novel runs the gamut of emotions and techniques as it depicts a Chicago family in turmoil....Although he's an unmistakably American author, Meno--a winner of the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren short story award--recalls Anton Chekhov with his amused appreciation of human foibles, his unsentimental affection for people who often behave badly but usually mean well., I think The Great Perhaps is the wisest, most humane and transcendent novel on the contemporary family since The Corrections... A marvelous book., Joe Meno's fiction has it all--humor and heart, moral gravitas, and a formal playfulness that catches you pleasantly by surprise., For most of the last decade, a lot of prominent fiction writers interested in establishing their realist bona fides, the relevance of their work to the way we live now, seemed to feel they had no choice but to incorporate 9/11. But Meno dares to consign it, and our response to it, to a larger historical and spiritual context, and even to suggest that there is nothing new under the sun. A few years ago that might have seemed heretical, but traditionally such farsightedness is part of a novelist's job., It's insufferable to be forced to live with a crazy family, especially when you refuse to admit your own share of the madness. Joe Meno delivers tenderness and wit to a family struggling to prop up a house of cards.
