Coming June 2, 2020.
https://www.counterpointpress.com/dd-product/between-everything-and-nothing/
“Ambitious exposé of the troubled immigration system as seen through the lens of two African migrants’ experiences. Meno, a professor of creative writing and prolific fiction writer, tracks the grueling journeys of his complexly rendered protagonists, Razak and Seidu, both from Ghana, one fleeing a murderous family dispute, the other a promising soccer player facing persecution after being outed as bisexual. The author portrays them convincingly as hapless pawns in a massive explosion of migration, countered in the Americas with greed and cruelty. Even for those with legitimate reasons to seek shelter, like his protagonists, “the asylum process in the U.S. has become its own inviolable system.” The narrative is both sprawling and controlled, as Meno alternates between a terrifying account of their attempts to reach safety across the Canadian border during a blizzard and the longer-term arc of their improbable, brutal journeys as migrants…Meno writes deftly, with a fine sense of detail and place, bringing an all-too-common story to life. A well-paced and engaging account, highly relevant to current political debates.” -Kirkus, starred review
“When Ghanaian refugees Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal meet by chance at a bus stop on a freezing night in Minneapolis, in December 2016, each man had already been on a long and torturous journey to reach the United States. Razak fled Ghana for Brazil after his half-siblings brutally attacked him in an effort to rob him of his part of his inheritance from their father. Seidu, 11 years Razak’s junior, traveled to Brazil for soccer tryouts, but when his coach caught him in bed with another man, he fled, fearing retribution from the anti-LGBT Ghanaian government. Both men set off across South America, heading for the U.S., and facing perils ranging from armed robbers to swindlers, starvation, dehydration, and bureaucratic officials seeking bribes as they made their way through Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. When the men finally arrived in the U.S. to apply for asylum, they were incarcerated and thrown into a system so hostile, and so brutal, each of them was forced to look north to Canada for sanctuary, despite having relatives in the U.S. In his first nonfiction book, acclaimed fiction writer Meno (Marvel and a Wonder, 2015) presents a powerful and eye-opening recounting of each asylum-seeker’s harrowing odyssey, essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the current immigration crisis.”-Booklist, starred review
“A suspenseful account of two Ghanaian refugees’ quest for political asylum … Meno’s well-written story of survival and friendship puts individual faces on the plight of millions of refugees around the world. Readers will be equal parts outraged and inspired by this novelistic account.” ―Publishers Weekly
“The most important book I’ve read in a long time, Between Everything and Nothing vividly dramatizes what the world needs to know about the tragic effects of our corrupt and dehumanizing immigration system. Though harrowing, the story of Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal is also deeply inspiring, revealing how two powerless but fiercely courageous asylum seekers, battered by years of injustice and cruelty, held fast to their religious faith, their dignity, and their love and hope for humanity.” ―Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend
Please read an excerpt:
Read Joe Meno’s serial novella on Electric Literature:
Hear Michael Ian Black read Joe Meno’s “Everything Strange and Unknown”
People are becoming clouds
Joe Meno’s “Animal Hospital” on Selected Shorts.
Winner of the Society of Midland Author’s Awards for Adult Fiction 2015
Longlisted for the American Library Association’s 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
A Best of Booklist, the Millions, Chicago Reader, Foreword Book Reviews, New City Chicago, and Buzzfeed
“Meno makes the most banal prose—grunts and salutations, small talk over meals—compelling and necessary… . [Meno] has a knack for giving small happenings emotional weight… . Meno knows how to make you love his characters, want what they want. But don’t think he’s going to let things turn out well for them. Marvels and wonders aren’t worth the trouble. Fortunately, this book is.”
—New York Times Book Review
“[A] rugged page-turner… . There’s a bit of the country noir of Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone in the stark atmosphere Mr. Meno evokes (A faded town, fading, harried with dusty light, midafternoon), and a bit of the Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino in the story of the vigilante grandfather. But the writing is propulsive enough to make you forget its influences. And at moments the book’s consuming darkness is lifted by potent, if inscrutable visions of the talismanic horse—a flash of lightning curving along the horizon.”
—Wall Street Journal
“But in two new books—a big novel, Marvel and a Wonder, and the anthology Chicago Noir: The Classics, published simultaneously in early September by Akashic in hardcover and paperback—we’re reminded that Meno has a dark side that on occasion he lets out of jail, allowing it to cast a long and menacing shadow.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Evoking William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, Meno’s suspenseful, mordantly incisive, many-layered tale can also be read as an equine Moby-Dick. As he tracks the bewildering seismic shifts under way in America, Meno celebrates everyday marvels, including the hard-proven love between grandfather and grandson.”
—Booklist, Starred review
“In this high-stakes, mordantly incisive, compassionate drama, Quentin, a mixed-race teen, is spending the summer with Jim, his white grandfather, when a magnificent white racehorse is inexplicably delivered to Jim’s Indiana farm.”
—Booklist, Editors’ Choice
“Talented Meno has penned a wise and touching novel of love, loyalty, courage; an extraordinary book not to be missed.”
—Library Journal, Starred review
“Faulkner-ian epic for the contemporary age… . [Meno] draws on the grave themes and austere styles of writers like Cormac McCarthy and Daniel Woodrell to offer a mix of biblical allegories, tinder-dry prose, and noble characters trying to survive in a wretched world… . The novel’s prose is marvelous in its spare, convincing grit while the story’s themes of family, redemption, sacrifice, and faith echo the plays of Sam Shepard at times… . A grandiose, atmospheric portrait of Middle America in all its damaged glory.”
—Kirkuk Reviews
“The latest by Meno is a compelling mash-up of magic and the absurd with the grittiness of a world inhabited by punks, thieves, and losers, as a grandfather and his grandson take a road trip through 1990s rural America in search of their stolen horse… . This is a provocative reflection on the lives of the disenfranchised in the waning days of the 20th century, with a bittersweet resolution that will resonate with readers.”
—Publishers Weekly
Selected as a Midwest Connections pick by the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association
“While Meno writes in lush sentences, evoking authors like William Faulkner, his plot feels akin to Cormac McCarthy… . A fitting addition to the canon of books about hard men and their relationship to nature. Discover: A pastoral novel of family, desperation and a horse like no other.”
—Shelf Awareness
“[Marvel and a Wonder] is a unique take on the generation gap between a Korean war vet and his sixteen-year-old grandson, exploring themes like faith, sacrifice and family … With a bit of crime, tragedy and even love.”
—MTV News
“The book draws comparisons to William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, and Toni Morrison. It’s at once a story about two people and an exploration of the past, present, and future of the country… . As the fate of the horse, of Jim Falls, of Quentin—of America!—becomes more perilous, the book picks up speed. The story is operating on different levels—as a family story, an epic, and in the end a page-turner—but they remain skillfully balanced.”
—Chicago Reader
“An emotionally honest exploration of the human need for connection.”
—New city
“In telling the story of Jim and Quentin, Meno broadens the conversation about the winners and losers of the global economy… . Both [protagonist] Jim Falls and Marvel and a Wonder seem like a reimagining of those great old depression era novels by John Steinbeck and William Faulkner and Meridel Le Sueur. The book makes visible the typically invisible victims of unjust economic policies. It makes these characters people—flawed and beautiful.”
—The Millions
“Joe Meno’s latest novel is an incredible modern myth involving horses, a dying agrarian economy, and the idea of American masculinity, and it also happens to be the most spot-on depiction of north central Indiana in the mid-’90s I’ve ever read.”
—The Millions, Janet Potter’s A Year in Reading
“The always-wonderful Joe Meno is back with a many layered tale… . This is a departure from Meno’s usual novels, and borders on Cormac McCarthy territory.”
—Book Riot
“I’ve long adored Joe Meno’s novels, which seamlessly blend magical realism with the grittiest elements of reality… . If you like novels that are both moving and exciting, then don’t miss this one.”
—Literary Hub, The Great Booksellers Fall Preview of 2015 (selected by John Cleary from Papercuts J.P.)
“Meno’s greatest gift is his love and compassion for his characters … . A whole range of Southern lit influences pervade [Marvel and a Wonder], from icons like William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor to more contemporary writers like Donna Tartt and Cormac McCarthy. He evokes the landscape in terse, no-frills language, and peppers it with menace. He confronts racism through the boy, whose father is black. The journey harrows their spirits. Meno, in other words, continues to grow as a writer, though his sensibility remains intact. The characters here are once again the engines of the book—or, more aptly, it is Meno’s interest and unwavering sympathy for them that drives it.”
—Literary Hub, feature on Joe Meno
“Joe Meno’s hauntingly lovely, richly detailed Marvel and a Wonder examines the contentious and, eventually, tender relationship between seventy-one-year-old widower Jim Falls and his teenage grandson Quentin.”
—Hypertext
“Compelling … . A character-driven story of loss in America’s heartland. It’s a story of flawed characters and a landscape that, despite occasional beauty, has been used up and passed over … . It’s a book that despite its damaged characters, consistently reaches for excellence: a wonder.”
—Foreword Reviews
“Meno’s stylistic inventiveness, humane curiosity and fictional range are always impressive.”
—Newcity, Fall Lit Preview 2015
“In this ambitious epic, a man and his grandson embark on a cross-country journey to find a missing horse.”
—Chicago Magazine
“Wonder explodes into a breakneck thriller as grandfather and grandson try to recover the horse, and run into characters even more nefarious than the horse thief.”
—Capital Times
“A Moby Dick for Middle America.”
—Wisconsin State Journal
“The grit is palpable in Joe Meno’s Marvel and a Wonder… . reminiscent of Gran Torino… .in the same vein as Cormac McCarthy.”
—Des Moines City View
“Though Meno crafts a dramatic arc that is both compelling and approachable, his true stride is found in the way small moments are expanded to feel monumental through simple dialogue or the way Quentin actively watches his grandfather breathe, just to make sure he is still alive… . Though characters have a layer of complexity elevated above everyday experiences, Meno includes small moments of intense, capital H humanity.”
—Columbia Chronicle
“In his gritty new novel, Marvel and a Wonder, Chicago writer Joe Meno has reinvented himself again, exploring the haunting human and natural landscapes of the rural Midwest in the vein of the Coen brothers’ Fargo and No Country for Old Men… . Bleak and beautiful.”
—Gapers Block
“I had high hopes for Marvel and a Wonder, but it’s not the novel I was hoping for—it’s better… . In the dark corners of this world, Meno finds light and beauty to suddenly thrust before readers… . Meno’s skillful interplay of light and shadow propels the plot through what could be, in another writer’s hands, dozens of pages of monotonous driving, and it keeps the book on the palatable side of the Western Noir genre for readers who can’t stomach Cormac McCarthy. To dismiss it as just genre writing, however, is a great mistake. Not only is it too beautiful for that, it is also gloriously woven through with loose ends, unanswered questions, and ambiguity.”
—Books & Whatnot
“Winner of the Discover Great New Writers Award and the Nelson Algren Award, among other honors, Meno can be entertainingly outré. This story of a man and his grandfather hunting for their stolen horse is also affecting.”
—Library Journal Prepub Alert, Barbara Hoffert’s Galley Guide Discoveries
“Just finished Marvel and a Wonder … It’s all I did for two days. Amazing.”
—Susan Straight, author of A Million Nightingales
“Marvel and a Wonder is such a tender love story. The love of an irascible grandfather for his baffling grandson; the love for a mysterious horse; the love for a country that no longer seems to love us back. Joe Meno writes with poise and wit and stunning amounts of empathy. What a beautiful story. What a lovely book.”
—Victor LaValle, author of The Devil in Silver
“Both sprawling and intimate, Marvel and a Wonder is a vivid portrait of Heartland America, and infuses its array of characters with humor, empathy, and insight. I’ve long been an admirer of Joe Meno’s work, and this is his most ambitious book yet.”
—Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply
office girl
a novel by joe meno
office girl excerpts:
electric literature’s recommended reading
artwork by celine loupe
an amazon.com best book of the month, july 2012
a kirkus reviews best book of 2012
a daily candy best book of 2012
a believer reader poll best book of 2012
a chicago reader best book of 2013
a publishers weekly pick of the week:
In Joe Meno’s new novel, set in the last year of the 20th century, art school dropout Odile Neff and amateur sound artist Jack Blevins work deadening office jobs; gush about indie rock, French film, and obscure comic book artists; and gradually start a relationship that doubles as an art movement. They are, in other words, the 20-something doyens of pop culture and their tale of promiscuous roommates, on-again/off-again exes, and awkward sex is punctuated on the page by cute little doodles, black and white photographs (of, say, a topless woman in a Stormtrooper mask), and monologues that could easily pass for Belle & Sebastian lyrics (“It doesn’t pay to be a dreamer because all they really want you to do is answer the phone”).
new york times book review:
An off-kilter romance doubles as an art movement in Joe Meno’s novel. The novel reads as a parody of art-school types…and as a tribute to their devil-may-care spirit. Meno impressively captures post-adolescent female angst and insecurity. Fresh and funny, the images also encapsulate the mortification, confusion and excitement that define so many 20-something existences.
maria semple, new york times book review:
Delighted me all the way through.
wall street journal:
Wonderful storytelling panache…Odile is a brash, moody, likable young woman navigating the obstacles of caddish boyfriends and lousy jobs, embarking on the sort of sentimental journey that literary heroines have been making since Fanny Burney’s “Evelina” in the 1770s. Tenderhearted Jack is the awkward, quiet sort that the women in Jane Austen’s novels overlook until book’s end. He is obsessed with tape-recording Chicago’s ambient noises so that he can simulate the city in the safety of his bedroom, “a single town he has invented made of nothing but sound.” Odile and Jack meet while working in drab night jobs at a Muzak-supply company. The two quickly connect, and Mr. Meno excels at capturing the way that budding love can make two people feel brave and freshly alive to their surroundings…the story of the relationship has a sweet simplicity.
marie claire:
Cultural cred: Along with PBRs, flannels, and thick-framed glasses, this Millennial Franny and Zooey is an instant hipster staple. Plot notes: It’s 1999 and Odile and Jack are partying like it was…well, you know. Meno’s alternate titles help give the gist: Bohemians or Young People on Bicycles Doing Troubling Things. Cross-media: Drawings and Polaroids provide a playful, quirky element.
chicago tribune:
Odile and Jack are two characters in search of authentic emotion — their pas de deux is dynamic. Meno’s plain style seems appropriate for these characters and their occasions, and the low-key drawings and amateur photographs that punctuate the narrative lend a home-video feel to this story of slacker bohemia, the temp jobs, odd jobs and hand jobs.
daily beast:
Meno’s book is an honest look at the isolation of being a creative person in your 20s living in a city. Cody Hudson’s hand-drawn illustrations, which relate to the text only laterally, add a charm akin to the small doodles that break up long New Yorker articles. The photos by Todd Baxter add a third level to the package, helping to make Meno’s book feel more like an artwork.
kansas city star:
In this geeky-elegant novel, Meno transforms wintery Chicago into a wondrous crystallization of countless dreams and tragedies, while telling the stories of two derailed young artists, two wounded souls, in cinematic vignettes that range from lushly atmospheric visions to crack-shot volleys of poignant and funny dialogue. A beguiling and slyly disquieting storyteller, he forges surprising connections between deep emotion and edgy absurdity, self-conscious hipness and timeless metaphysics. With bicycles in the snow emblematic of both precariousness and determination, Meno’s charming, melancholy, frank and droll love story wrapped around an art manifesto both celebrates those who question and protest the established order and contemplates the dilemmas that make family, creativity, ambition and love perpetually confounding and essential.
chicago sun times:
A wispy, bittersweet romance.
milwaukee journal-sentinel:
Office Girl relates the brief romance of 20-somethings Odile and Jack, who both work for the phone bank at Muzak Situations, ride their bicycles through Chicago in the snow, and bumble their way through love, work and their creative activities. Both have the itch to do something artistic. It’s easy for me to see this story as a movie, perhaps one by Francois Truffaut (who gets a namecheck in the book), if we can bundle everyone and their bicycles into the time machine.
wichita eagle:
Office Girl paints a picture of 20-somethings in search of greatness. In committing their random acts of art, the two come to learn quite a bit about themselves, even if it’s not what they wanted to know. And maybe they’re able to jump their individual ruts, even if the jump lands them in a place they hadn’t expected.
booklist (starred review):
Meno has constructed a snow-flake delicate inquiry into alienation and longing. Illustrated with drawings and photographs and shaped by tender empathy, buoyant imagination, and bittersweet wit, this wistful, provocative, off-kilter love story affirms the bonds forged by art and story.
kirkus reviews:
The talented Chicago-based Meno has composed a gorgeous little indie romance, circa 1999…A sweetheart of a novel, complete with a hazy ending.
chicago reader:
Office Girl is a bittersweet little love story framed by Bill Clinton’s 1999 impeachment trial and the turn of the millennium. By letting his characters be emotionally vulnerable, even shallow or trite—which is to say … real—Meno supplies an off-kilter, slightly inappropriate answer to the Hollywood rom-com. Meno is a deft writer. The dialogue in Office Girl is often funny, the pacing quirky, and some of its quick, affecting similes remind me of Lorrie Moore. Flashing back to a childhood assault, Meno describes Odile’s bag lying on the ground, “unfamiliar as an amputated limb.” A passing train “sounds like a kid whose teeth are all being pulled out at the same time.” The text is complemented, charmingly, by Cody Hudson’s illustrations and Todd Baxter’s photos.
timeout chicago:
Meno’s books have become increasingly liminal and idiosyncratic. In this latest, it feels as if Meno has written the book he’s been wanting to write for years, combining all of those classic elements of his previous work: the stop-and-start of youthful inertia, the painful purity of romance, the way childhood informs (i.e. wrecks) us as adults and a direct prose cut into vignettes and montage. He also works with longtime collaborators photographer Todd Baxter and painter Cody Hudson. Gorgeously packaged, it’s like a Meno box set 15 years in the making.
the stranger, seattle:
Office Girl might be Joe Meno’s breakthrough novel. Set in 1999, Office Girl tells the story of a pair of young, intelligent drifters who decide to start their own art movement. It’s a stripped-down experience of a novel which means Meno’s crystalline prose has a chance to shine.
timeout new york:
Office Girl might be a standard boy-meets-girl tale, if not for the fact that the boy likes to record the sounds of gloves abandoned in snowdrifts, while the girl has a penchant for filling elevators with silver balloons.
philadelphia city paper:
Office Girl is a relatively simple love story: You know most of the beats and understand from the beginning how the story needs to end; the pleasure comes from the way Meno hits those beats, how he manages his characters and moments. And some of those moments are really excellent: Jack and Odile’s drift toward a first kiss, for instance, or their lovers’ conspiracy, mirrored in Cody Hudson’s naive drawings. And the heavier ideas that Meno stuffs into the corners around his self-consciously slight characters — like an ongoing struggle with sound and music that’s part of the last-act climax — give the book weight.
flavorwire:
A lithe, winking take on the boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl cliché, Meno’s newest novel is like Perks of Being a Wallflower for the 20-something set — and just like that iconic novel of creatives-in-crisis, this one is quirky, clever, and full of bitten tongues and youthful dreaming. Add bicycles, fingerless gloves, and one of the most twee art projects we could have ever imagined, and you’ve got a charming and unpretentious hipster love story destined to be the next cult classic.
onion a.v. club:
…Shelves neatly into the anti-establishment, punk-rock canon Meno created with books like his breakthrough, Hairstyles Of The Damned.
new york journal of books:
Mr. Meno approaches his title character’s potentially depressing combination of disadvantageous circumstances and poor choices with sufficient aesthetic distance to find levity amid the angst. And while Office Girl is a quick and easy read it is not insubstantial.
michigan avenue magazine:
While Office Girl features illustrations by artist Cody Hudson and photographs by Todd Baxter, its real substance lies in the story itself. Set in Chicago right before the new millennium, Meno, a Chicagoan, explores the start of an art movement through the eyes of two twenty-something dreamers in this novel.
revel rouse magazine:
Joe Meno’s newest novel Office Girl, isn’t some end-of-the-Millennium gloomy read. Rather it’s an unconventional call to action encapsulating the lives of two “creative souls” set adrift in urban Chicago at the end of the twentieth century. Don’t be fooled by its lack of chapters and intermittent doodles, there are sections that you will likely have to reread before you can truly grasp Jack and Odile’s motivations. At times it can even be a bit disheartening, but that is actually what makes Office Girl brilliant. Whether you are 13 or 30, it’s the perfect book to pick up when that nagging feeling of unrest captures you over your current condition.
grantland:
I was completely charmed by its boy-meets-quirky-girl romance. Office Girl is unabashedly earnest. It’s so sweet and sincere. Tthe most important detail is the year: 1999, a moment of uncertainty in the world and the lives of the novel’s couple. Today, when it seems that most media is hellbent on constantly reflecting on and reinventing our childhood and adolescence, it’s refreshing to read a novel that can be nostalgic without being ironic.
anobium magazine:
Office Girl is packed with whimsy and soft terror. It’s emotionally affective and its scenes are sometimes too familiar, as if you have once been here yourself, in this same office, in that same bedroom, on that same street. It’s the tale of a weeklong romance that cuts to the heart. At times, you remember it like it was your own. Both Jack and Odile suffer from their own inability to translate their thoughts into words, and they possess a certain innocent, curious sexuality. There’s nothing graphic here, but the feelings are laid bare. And, as if in a dream, you can watch these feelings winding themselves through Jack and Odile’s increasingly complex layers of consciousness.
Dreaming of being eaten by a Lion.
“Lion’s Jaws” by Joe Meno