Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir (Triquarterly) [Paperback]

I bought Meno's acclaimed novel Hairstyles of the Damned when it first came out and am sad to report I still haven't gotten around to reading it (part of my procrastination is that I want to try and get my book group to read it). But I picked up this beautifully designed collection of stories and tore through it in about three days, 5-6 stories a day, and it's certainly whetted my appetite to go back and check out Hairstyles, as well as Meno's other two novels. Eleven of the stories appeared previously in publications like Bridge, Gulf Coast, Hair Trigger, Kiss Machine, Other Voices, Pigeon, and The 2nd Hand, and six of 'em are newly unveiled here. They are united by an overarching deadpan dark humor coupled with tragedy, loneliness, and settings that are often slightly askew versions of reality.

The opening story ("The Use of Medicine") is a prime example of this sensibility. In it, two young children pillage their dead father's medical supplies for sedatives, allowing them to catch small animals and dress them up in clothes. In "Our Neck of the Woods", a foreman at a plastic-molding factory seeks meaning from his life and finds it in larceny and a pretty immigrant coworker. This is followed by one of my favorite stories, "A Trip to Greek Mythology Camp", which imagines a libertine threadbare camp for the freaks and geeks set. The next four stories, while perfectly well-written, didn't work nearly as well for me. "Happiness Will Be Yours", in which two childhood friends who were kidnapped reunite every year at an amusement park, feels a little forced, and the vignette of a little girl in "Be a Good Citizen" never goes anywhere that interesting. "In the Arms of Someone You Love" is set in Cuba on the eve revolutionary troops took Havana, and feels somehow slight, and "The Moll" is a throwaway single pager.

"Tijuana Women" takes the reader back into the life of another lonely adolescent and is a nice little portrait. The loneliness theme continues in the very good story "I'll be Your Sailor", in which a newly wealthy man ("A bad haircut got me a big cash settlement") embarks on an affair with a loose married woman and befriends some kids upstairs. "Midway" is another very strong story, as two teenage brothers struggle live on their own and come to terms with their abandonment. "Mr. Song" is infused with bittersweetness, as a self-described "phony" takes a woman back to his apartment and his usual seduction routine goes awry. "A Strange Episode of Aqua Voyage" is a funny and sad vignette in another loner's life, albeit this one a married man who tunes into some late-night porn to discover he's not alone. "Women I Have Made Cry" is a Nick Hornbyesque enumeration of the title, culminating in a moment of crystal clarity.

The final two stories put an exclamation point on the sorrowful proceedings. In "A Town of Night", two blue-collar brothers embark on a half-baked scheme to steal a horse and sell it across the border in Mexico. As they go through the motions, one periodically breaks down at his lost love. And in "Astronaut of the Year", a narrating chauffeur drives the pathetic titular hero around town. By the end of the collection, some readers may find themselves a little depressed by so many portraits of people struggling for a little happiness. However, this is leavened in many cases by Meno's prose, which blends in enough wit and interesting twists to keep it from being a one-note affair. Short fiction fans are advised to take a look.

Chicago's own Joe Meno is a playwright, musician, a music journalist, the author of three novels (Tender as Hellfire, How the Hula Girl Sings, and Hairstyles of the Damned), and now, Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir, a collection of short stories that just won the Society of Midland Authors Award for fiction. If he wasn't such a nice guy, you'd want to break his pencils, his computer, his fingers, and everything else he might need to write with. He's that good.

Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir is as close in size to a 7-inch record as the binding of a book will allow, and every one of the 17 stories in the book reads like a great song.

Bluebirds gives us twenty-first century horse thieves, children who sedate and dress up small animals in doll's clothes to cheer up their heartbroken mother who, on her birthday, finds their father has hanged himself in the cellar, a boy who steals luggage from travelers at Midway airport, grown men who celebrate the anniversary of their abduction as children by going to Kiddieland every year.

There is a theme of parentlessness in these stories, even when parents are characters. There are childish parents and children you'll want to adopt, there is sadness and regret and tragedy, oddities and infidelities, but through it all there lies hope: the sweetness of a boy in love, the heroic possibilities of childhood, the love between young brothers.

Get this book. Give it to your teenager if you want them to love a book. Give it to a writer to prove what words can do.