Maybe it’s exactly what we need right now? … Meno reminds us that though family’s do, in fact, fuck you up, sometimes they’re the only thing that can put you back together.” -Lit Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2022 “Joe Meno writes with a humor and tenderness that sometimes doesn’t feel made for this bleak hour of history … Or. “espite the long odds stacked against his characters, Meno keeps their story buoyant …They’re hopelessly optimistic in their own twisted way … What this story gets so right is how so many of us live in the past and the present all at once.” “As in all his tender and edgy fiction, Meno’s poetic prose is infused with sweet compassion and sharp protest as he marvels over ‘the beautiful failure of all human beings struggling against their own glorious mistakes’ while, somehow, finding a way forward.”

Once Isobel begins playing cello again, Aleks comes to see a world of possibility and wonder in the lives of his extraordinarily complicated family. Doomed by fate, a family history of failure, an odd mother, an absent father, and a younger brother with a peculiar fondness for catastrophes, the two siblings have all but given up.īut when an illness forces Isobel and her three-year-old daughter to move back into the family home, Aleks becomes deeply involved in the endless challenges that surround his relatives. Now in their twenties, they find themselves encountering ridiculous jobs, unfulfilling romantic relationships, and the outrageousness of ordinary life.

As the only Eastern European family growing up on their block on the far southside of Chicago, the pair were inseparable until each was forced to confront the absurdity of tragedy at an early age and abandon their musical ambitions. Aleksandar and Isobel are siblings and former classical music prodigies, once destined for greatness.

Hairstyles of the damned by joe meno