The Great Perhaps: A Novel

by Joe Meno

Overview

“This ambitious, adventurous writer . . . recalls Anton Chekhov with his amused appreciation of human foibles.”—Wendy Smith, Chicago Tribune

The sky is falling for the Caspers, a family of cowards. When the parents decide to separate, this family is forced to appreciate the cloudiness of this modern age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393304565
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/12/2010
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	430
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Winner of a Nelson Algren Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a finalist for the 2008 Story Prize, Joe Meno has written two short story collections and four novels, including Hairstyles of the Damned and The Great Perhaps. He teaches creative writing at Columbia College in Chicago.

Editorial Reviews

"Meno is thinking hard about why the world is the way it is and about where hope for change might reasonably lie."

Jonathan Dee

"Meno masterfully, and meaningfully, conflates the fantastic with the everyday. . . . Tender, funny, spooky, and gripping."

Booklist - Donna Seaman

"A darkly funny, lyrical, and shrewdly observant chronicle of a family on the verge of a nervous breakdown."

Tom Perrotta

Purposefully fragmented, often beguiling novel about a Chicago family's slow disintegration as its disgruntled members search in vain for the ethereal things they believe will set them free. His back catalog is largely rooted in punk-rock and pulp-fiction attitudes, but Meno (Demons in the Spring, 2008, etc.) takes a shot at adulthood here. The Casper family patriarch is middle-aged Jonathan, who teaches paleontology at the University of Chicago. Single-mindedly on the trail of a legendary giant squid, the wretched professor is compromised by a rare form of epilepsy that causes seizures when he sees a cloud. His family is just as displeased as his disbelieving employers. Jonathan's regretfully dutiful wife, scientist Madeline (whose chapters all come in a bothersome outline format, arranged alphabetically), has had enough of her overworked husband, the dead pigeons ruining her experiments and the mysterious "cloud-figure" she sees in the backyard. Their daughter Amelia is either raging at her elders, stumbling through the pretense of sex with a young professor or planning to build a bomb to satisfy her revolutionary instincts. Younger sister Thisbe discovers the turmoil of 14 with a frustrating crush on her classmate Roxie and a fruitless search for God in the city's cathedrals. Jarring the story most is Jonathan's aged father Henry, whose (possibly unreliable) memories hurl the story off in uninspired directions. Henry has decided that he will make himself disappear-if not by fleeing, which he tries often, then by speaking a little less each day. At the crossroads between all these relations is a near-divorce, some adult revelations, an adolescent breakthrough and even a few surprisinglytender moments of forgiveness. Definitely out of the ordinary, and not the ideal book to digest in one sitting, but a mature step forward for this unsettling postmodernist. Author tour to Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Brooklyn, Seattle, Portland, Ore. Agent: Maria Massie/Lippincott Massie McQuilkin

Kirkus Reviews

"I think The Great Perhaps is the wisest, most humane and transcendent novel on the contemporary family since The Corrections... A marvelous book."

Irvine Welsh

"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."

Chicago Tribune

"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."

Lydia Millet

"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."

Poets & Writers - Kevin Nance

"Joe Meno’s fiction has it all—humor and heart, moral gravitas, and a formal playfulness that catches you pleasantly by surprise."

Ed Park

"An affecting domestic portrait, deftly drawn."

The Daily Beast - Taylor Antrim

"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."

The New York Times Book Review - Jonathon Dee

"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."

G. Xavier Robillard