old
a kirkus book of the year
a booklist best of 2006
a chicago tribune book of the year
In the twilight of a mysterious childhood full of wonder, Billy Argo, boy detective, is brokenhearted to find that his younger sister and crime-solving partner, Caroline, has committed suicide. Ten years later, Billy, age thirty, returns from an extended stay at St. Vitus's Hospital for the Mentally Ill to discover the world full of unimaginable strangeness: office buildings vanish without reason, small animals turn up without their heads, and cruel villains ride city buses to complete their evil schemes.
Lost within this unwelcoming place, Billy finds the companionship of two lonely, extraordinary children, Effie and Gus Mumford, one a science fair genius, the other a charming, silent bully. With a nearly forgotten bravery, Billy treads from the unendurable boredom of a telemarketing job, stumbles into the awkward beauty of a desperate pickpocket named Penny Maple, and confronts the nearly impossible solution to the mystery of his sister's death. Along a path laden with hidden clues and codes that dare the reader to help Billy decipher the mysteries he encounters, the boy detective may learn the greatest secret of all: the necessity of the unknown.
bluebirds used to croon in the choir: short stories (2005)
winner of the society of midland author's prize for fiction 2005
from Kirkus Reviews:"A jazzy collection of short stories and little moments from genre-hopping Meno (Hairstyles of the Damned, 2004, etc.). Meno ensures from the first that readers are in odd territory, starting off with "The Use of Medicine," about a pair of kids using an old bottle of belladonna and a hypodermic they find among their father's medical supplies to drug little animals. Surreality rears its head in "In the Arms of Someone You Love," set in revolutionary Cuba, where a man worries about losing his wife to a dashing magician. The city erupts in violence, and the man makes a devilish barter for the sake of love, a move that takes this tale out of the realm of magical realism and into that of high romantic fantasy. More mundane matters prevail in such stories as "Mr. Song," which portrays a cad who pays the aged crooner in the apartment next door to sing ballads through the thin walls as a way of setting the mood, and "I'll Be Your Sailor," in which a schlemiel carries on a benighted affair with a woman in his apartment building who works at a themed fast-food restaurant and has a hockey-loving brute for an uncaring husband. The collection's highlight is the hilarious "A Trip to Greek Mythology Camp," a painfully comic scenario about a summer camp full of socially awkward kids who assume that in numbers they will find acceptance. Musical tales of love and loss with hardly a word wasted."
hairstyles of the damned (2004)
a chicago tribune book of the year
The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers:
Brian Oswald is an oddly endearing, conflicted Chicago high school student, obsessed with hard rock and his best friend, a pink-haired punk named Gretchen. Brian frets over his attraction to Gretchen; after all, she's overweight, belligerent, and prone to fistfights. Like all teenagers, Brian struggles with his identity. A bit of an outcast, he uses this condition to assess the social options available to him at his parochial school. Quiet, introspective Brian identifies best with the punks, even if he doesn't quite join their ranks. But his emotional honesty allows him to see clearly behind their arrogant posturing a very real anger and a true love of music: "When everything else was wrong, [the music] made it right."
Hairstyles of the Damned is a richly detailed, deeply evocative account of those painfully remembered teenage years -- a time of roller-coaster emotions, when nearly every insignificant slight feels like a body slam. Meno's prose pulls no punches. His language is raunchy, direct from the mouths of punks, and pungently recalls American adolescence in the '90s as a time so raw that readers will cringe at its veracity, fictional though his account may be. Meno's snapshot of the past is so achingly lucid, so compelling, and so alive, that readers will not only see it but will smell it, taste it, and feel it as well. (Holiday 2004 Selection)
how the hula girl sings (2001)
now in paperback from akashic books
A young ex-con in a small Illinois town. A lonely giant with a haunted past. A beautiful girl with a troubled heart. Strange and darkly magical, How the Hula Girl Sings begins exactly where most pulp fiction usually ends, with the vivid episode of the terrible crime itself. Three years later, Luce Lemay, out on parole for the awful tragedy, does his best to finds hope: in a new job at the local Gas-N-Go; in his companion and fellow ex-con, Junior Breen, who spells out puzzling messages to the unquiet ghosts of his past; and finally, in the arms of the lovely but reckless Charlene. How the Hula Girl Sings is a suspenseful exploration of a country bright with the far-off stars of forgiveness and dark with the still-looming shadow of the death penalty.
tender as hellfire (1999)
now in paperback from akashic books
In Tender as Hellfire, Joe Meno limns a near-fantastical world of trailer park floozies, broken-down '76 Impalas, lost glass eyes, and the daily experiences of two boys trying to make sense of their random, sharp lives. Dough and Pill are brothers bound by more than blood. The anguish of their past, the terror of their present, and the uncertainty of their future all underscore the only truth that is within their grasp: each other. For beneath the cruel surface of their trailer park community lies a menagerie of odd characters, each one strange yet somehow beautiful, including Val, the blowsy bottle-blonde who shows surprising maternal instincts when the boys need it most, and El Rey del Perdito, the "Undisputed King of the Tango," a widower who dances nightly, imagining his wife in his arms, as Dough peers through the window contemplating a love that seems not to die. Surrounded by the strange and displaced, Dough and Pill must navigate through a world of constant pain and confusion. Finding beauty in unexpected places and maintaining reverence for hard-won scars, these two brothers learn, finally, that even broken things can be perfect.