- Hardcover: 416 pages
- Publisher: Picador (2 April 2010)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330512471
- ISBN-13: 978-0330512473
- Product Dimensions: 15.3 x 23.4 x 3.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 647,208 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Great Perhaps
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Product Description
Review
'If the first 100 pages are anything to go by, it's going to be a winner. Sharp and fluent, the prose is really a delight.' --The Bookseller
'The Great Perhaps is no ordinary comic novel. Meno transcends the genre by taking us back to the grandfather's harsh beginnings, and to the lives of previous generations of Caspers. His ability to connect these disparate strands into one story sets him above the average contemporary writer, and his sudden flights of fancy are irresistible.'
--The Bookseller
'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... They achieve no earth-shattering insights, and neither does the author; he simply reminds us with wit and compassion that the human condition is "both astonishing and quite ordinary."' --Chicago Tribune
'Meno's distinctively imaginative and compassionate fiction is forged at the intersection of ordinariness and astonishment... Tender, funny, spooky, and gripping, Meno's novel encompasses a subtle yet devastating critique of war; sensitively traces the ripple effect of a dark legacy of nebulousness, guilt, and fear; and evokes both heartache and wonder.' --Booklist
'Meno's handle on the written word is fresh and inviting, conjuring a story that delves deeply into the human heart.' --Publisher's Weekly
`The Great Perhaps focuses on the American family, devoting consecutive comic chapters to each member as they struggle to understand the world.'
--Vogue
`the incredibly funny story of 48-year-old American Jonathan Casper and his wife and teenage daughters as they cope, each in their own strange way, with marital separation and Jonathan's eccentric, ailing father. . . this highly original and surprisingly poignant novel.'
--Image magazine
`[it] combines narrative steel, human conviction and a thoughtful examination of the contemporary family. Meno's compassion and understanding is broad, yet intimate . . . With a keen sense of phrasing, and a perfect ear for dialogue - especially teenage speech - Meno has created a refreshingly readable, subtle and intelligent novel. It more than steps out of the shadow cast by The Corrections.' --Independent
`This is a funny, touching novel, but there is wisdom amid the absurdity, as Meno exposes the pitfalls of our soundbite culture and shows the impossibility of finding simple answers in a frightening, war-torn world.' --Waterstone's Books Quarterly
`This is a shrewd and original look at the American nuclear family . . . This is the first time that American author Joe Meno has been published here and we're all the richer for it . . . This is perfect book club fodder or for anyone that wants an imaginative distraction from their daily commute.'
--Stylist
`This big, wise, funny novel about one modern family has been compared to The Corrections because it explores similar territory and because it's very good . . . Brilliant' --The Times
`Meno's fifth book manages to mix all-too-real scenes from family life with disturbingly surreal episodes, the whole underscored by the undefined guilt and anxiety that are ever present in developed Western society. Not to be missed.' --Daily Mail
`as a comic novel, The Great Perhaps is a plausibly 21st-century version of Tristram Shandy, leading us to the inexorable conclusion that the human condition remains an absurd, faltering but essential defiance of tragedy.'
--Sunday Herald
`Each character's voice is convincing, and Meno builds a playful but heartfelt portrait of a not-quite-nuclear family wrangling with the eternal questions of love, life and obsessively following clouds that look like gigantic walking men.'
--Dazed & Confused
'The flat, uninfected language, interspersed with sudden absurdist flights of fancy, is reminiscent of of Kurt Vonnegut; the comic-book influence contains traces of Jonathan Lethem; while the forensic examination of familial dysfunction should satisfy Franzen fans.' --Guardian
'The Great Perhaps is no ordinary comic novel. Meno transcends the genre by taking us back to the grandfather's harsh beginnings, and to the lives of previous generations of Caspers. His ability to connect these disparate strands into one story sets him above the average contemporary writer, and his sudden flights of fancy are irresistible.'
--The Bookseller
'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... They achieve no earth-shattering insights, and neither does the author; he simply reminds us with wit and compassion that the human condition is "both astonishing and quite ordinary."' --Chicago Tribune
'Meno's distinctively imaginative and compassionate fiction is forged at the intersection of ordinariness and astonishment... Tender, funny, spooky, and gripping, Meno's novel encompasses a subtle yet devastating critique of war; sensitively traces the ripple effect of a dark legacy of nebulousness, guilt, and fear; and evokes both heartache and wonder.' --Booklist
'Meno's handle on the written word is fresh and inviting, conjuring a story that delves deeply into the human heart.' --Publisher's Weekly
`The Great Perhaps focuses on the American family, devoting consecutive comic chapters to each member as they struggle to understand the world.'
--Vogue
`the incredibly funny story of 48-year-old American Jonathan Casper and his wife and teenage daughters as they cope, each in their own strange way, with marital separation and Jonathan's eccentric, ailing father. . . this highly original and surprisingly poignant novel.'
--Image magazine
`[it] combines narrative steel, human conviction and a thoughtful examination of the contemporary family. Meno's compassion and understanding is broad, yet intimate . . . With a keen sense of phrasing, and a perfect ear for dialogue - especially teenage speech - Meno has created a refreshingly readable, subtle and intelligent novel. It more than steps out of the shadow cast by The Corrections.' --Independent
`This is a funny, touching novel, but there is wisdom amid the absurdity, as Meno exposes the pitfalls of our soundbite culture and shows the impossibility of finding simple answers in a frightening, war-torn world.' --Waterstone's Books Quarterly
`This is a shrewd and original look at the American nuclear family . . . This is the first time that American author Joe Meno has been published here and we're all the richer for it . . . This is perfect book club fodder or for anyone that wants an imaginative distraction from their daily commute.'
--Stylist
`This big, wise, funny novel about one modern family has been compared to The Corrections because it explores similar territory and because it's very good . . . Brilliant' --The Times
`Meno's fifth book manages to mix all-too-real scenes from family life with disturbingly surreal episodes, the whole underscored by the undefined guilt and anxiety that are ever present in developed Western society. Not to be missed.' --Daily Mail
`as a comic novel, The Great Perhaps is a plausibly 21st-century version of Tristram Shandy, leading us to the inexorable conclusion that the human condition remains an absurd, faltering but essential defiance of tragedy.'
--Sunday Herald
`Each character's voice is convincing, and Meno builds a playful but heartfelt portrait of a not-quite-nuclear family wrangling with the eternal questions of love, life and obsessively following clouds that look like gigantic walking men.'
--Dazed & Confused
'The flat, uninfected language, interspersed with sudden absurdist flights of fancy, is reminiscent of of Kurt Vonnegut; the comic-book influence contains traces of Jonathan Lethem; while the forensic examination of familial dysfunction should satisfy Franzen fans.' --Guardian
Product Description
'The wisest, most humane and transcendent novel on the contemporary family since The Corrections' Irvine Welsh
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
This book is described as "darkly funny, lyrical and shrewdly observant". In my opinion, it isn't really any of those things and has very little to recommend it.
The Great Perhaps is quite a common genre of novel, about modern family life and the challenges this brings. It depicts the various lives of the Casper family, husband (Jonathan), wife (Madeline), two daughters and grandfather. It also includes some 'historical notes' that stretch back in time to the 17th century. There isn't very much of a plot, other than a context in which Madeline threatens to leave the absent-minded Jonathan, who is pursuing a prehistoric giant squid. The main content of the book is the mundane, everyday lives of the different family members.
It's very rarely that I'll give a book one star, and I do so reluctantly. Some people might enjoy this book but I found it disjointed, tedious and with a writing style that I can only describe as gimmicky - 'figures' in the book depict line drawings of clouds and cars, and each paragraph in the chapters that describe Madeline's life have a letter of the alphabet before them. But these oddities add little to the story and are just annoying.
All in all, I would definitely avoid this novel - in my opinion it's not worth the time it will take to read it.
The Great Perhaps is quite a common genre of novel, about modern family life and the challenges this brings. It depicts the various lives of the Casper family, husband (Jonathan), wife (Madeline), two daughters and grandfather. It also includes some 'historical notes' that stretch back in time to the 17th century. There isn't very much of a plot, other than a context in which Madeline threatens to leave the absent-minded Jonathan, who is pursuing a prehistoric giant squid. The main content of the book is the mundane, everyday lives of the different family members.
It's very rarely that I'll give a book one star, and I do so reluctantly. Some people might enjoy this book but I found it disjointed, tedious and with a writing style that I can only describe as gimmicky - 'figures' in the book depict line drawings of clouds and cars, and each paragraph in the chapters that describe Madeline's life have a letter of the alphabet before them. But these oddities add little to the story and are just annoying.
All in all, I would definitely avoid this novel - in my opinion it's not worth the time it will take to read it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
It's hard to sum up the plot of this novel, because there is so little of it. The joy of it is not in what happens, but in watching the characters - the four members of a middle-class Chicago family - go about their lives, which, despite sharing a house, are more or less completely unconnected. Jonathan Casper is a research scientist, and his passion is the giant squid. He is endlessly thwarted by a younger, better-looking French rival who always seems to be in the right place at the right time when specimens surface. Jonathan's obsessive dedication to his work leads him to neglect his teaching at the University of Chicago, to have little idea about what is going on his daughters' lives, and to leave the running of the house to his wife, Madeline. Madeline is feeling increasingly resentful: she has her own career as a scientist, specialising in avian behaviour, and things are not going well with her research into dominance and hierarchy among pigeons. While Jonathan and Madeline's marriage is jeopardised by Jonathan's behaviour, their daughters are negotiating the difficult territory of high school. Thisbe is fourteen, and has few friends. Raised an atheist, she has suddenly developed a fascination with religion and prayer which borders on the obsessive-compulsive, much to Madeline's annoyance. Thisbe is desperate to be a singer and to use her voice to celebrate God, but is saddled with a terrible voice. At chorus practice, where has been relegated to accompanist, she meets the fascinating Roxie with her obnoxious attitude and beautiful voice, and an awkward friendship begins to emerge. Thisbe's sister Amelia is seventeen and believes herself a Marxist, seeing her role as editor of the school newspaper as one through which she must raise the consciousnesses of her unenlightened classmates. She bends all school assignments to her revolutionary ideals, creating a pipe bomb for a science project, and interpreting the brief for her history project as allowing her to write a film which proclaims "Capitalism is lame... George Bush is a terrorist..." For this is 2004, the presidential election looms, and America is confronted on a daily basis with the consequences of the invasion of Iraq.
While Jonathan, Madeline and their daughters are absorbed in the day-to-day, Jonathan's father, Henry, is hating his existence in a care home and carefully plotting his escape. As he counts down to when he will make his attempt, he withdraws a little more each day, gradually saying less and less and rationing what he feels are his final words. During this waiting period, Henry runs over his memories and summarises each one up in a few words, which he writes down addressed "to whom it may concern" and mails back to himself at the care home. Many of Henry's memories are to do with war: the arrest of his German father at the outbreak of World War Two; his family's interment in an American camp for enemy aliens; his own work as an engineer on super-fast planes, which he later discovers have been used to drop napalm on Vietnamese villages.
No particular point or message seems to be made by this novel; rather, it is a slow-burning examination of the themes of war, conflict and dominance told through watching the Caspar family through a few weeks of their lives. I enjoyed it very much.
While Jonathan, Madeline and their daughters are absorbed in the day-to-day, Jonathan's father, Henry, is hating his existence in a care home and carefully plotting his escape. As he counts down to when he will make his attempt, he withdraws a little more each day, gradually saying less and less and rationing what he feels are his final words. During this waiting period, Henry runs over his memories and summarises each one up in a few words, which he writes down addressed "to whom it may concern" and mails back to himself at the care home. Many of Henry's memories are to do with war: the arrest of his German father at the outbreak of World War Two; his family's interment in an American camp for enemy aliens; his own work as an engineer on super-fast planes, which he later discovers have been used to drop napalm on Vietnamese villages.
No particular point or message seems to be made by this novel; rather, it is a slow-burning examination of the themes of war, conflict and dominance told through watching the Caspar family through a few weeks of their lives. I enjoyed it very much.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
The story of "The Great Perhaps" is divided very evenly between no fewer than five lead characters, as aptly described in Amazon's Product Description- absent-minded Jonathan, his wife Madeline who starts chasing a 'cloud man', his eldest daughter Amelia who is constructing a pipe bomb, his youngest daughter Thisbe who keeps praying to God to strike her down for all the bad thoughts she's having, and his father Henry who keeps trying to escape from his nursing home.
Each of these five characters is fully formed, believable, and could have merited a novel in their own right. The trial separation of Jonathan and Madeline is a modern romance novel (of sorts); Amelia's teenage Marxism is a sharp biting comedy novel; Thisbe's struggle with under-informed religious confusion is a philosophical tale about modern religion and misconceptions; and Henry's story is a very moving account of a dying man reminiscing about his life as a German refugee in the USA during the Second World War.
Joe Meno juggles all these characters neatly, cleverly, in a way that keeps you engaged throughout, always wanting to know what happens next in these five interweaving stories.
Thrown into the mix are other elements such as the background story of the run-in of the 2004 Presidential Election (John Kerry vs re-electing Bush) and how it causes further divides in the family. Then, almost as asides, the reader is flung back into the 19th and 16th centuries to meet Jonathan's tragic ancestors in little interlude chapters called "Comments Of Limited Historical Importance". Whilst not being related to the main story they are neat little throwaway sections that consider how problems can change and echo through time.
A captivating, character-led novel that succeeds as both comedy and tragedy. An excellent read and I'll be looking out for Joe Meno's next work.
Each of these five characters is fully formed, believable, and could have merited a novel in their own right. The trial separation of Jonathan and Madeline is a modern romance novel (of sorts); Amelia's teenage Marxism is a sharp biting comedy novel; Thisbe's struggle with under-informed religious confusion is a philosophical tale about modern religion and misconceptions; and Henry's story is a very moving account of a dying man reminiscing about his life as a German refugee in the USA during the Second World War.
Joe Meno juggles all these characters neatly, cleverly, in a way that keeps you engaged throughout, always wanting to know what happens next in these five interweaving stories.
Thrown into the mix are other elements such as the background story of the run-in of the 2004 Presidential Election (John Kerry vs re-electing Bush) and how it causes further divides in the family. Then, almost as asides, the reader is flung back into the 19th and 16th centuries to meet Jonathan's tragic ancestors in little interlude chapters called "Comments Of Limited Historical Importance". Whilst not being related to the main story they are neat little throwaway sections that consider how problems can change and echo through time.
A captivating, character-led novel that succeeds as both comedy and tragedy. An excellent read and I'll be looking out for Joe Meno's next work.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Confused
This was the last book in a trio that I took away and can't help thinking that I read it for something to read. I have finished it and still am at a loss to explain the plot. Read more
Published 13 months ago by BlackTea
Crisis Averted. Life Resumes.
American novelists can give up trying to write The Great American Novel. It already exists. It's called Infinite Jest and its author killed himself last year, causing bunches of us... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Mrs. R.
A disfunctional family.
As this book has received mixed reviews I wasn't sure that I'd made a good choice. The plot, as others have mentioned, is minimal. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Doh
strangely perceptive
I have not read any of Joe Meno's other work but I am certainly tempted too after reading this book. Read more
Published 21 months ago by J. S. Meins
quirky and engaging.
The novel follows the story of an averagely dysfunctional family - Jonathan, the father, who has seizures if he sees a cloud, and has devoted his life to studying (with the hope of... Read more
Published 21 months ago by L. Doughton
Don't judge a book by it's cover.
This is a novel which sounds like almost every family in existence. None of the characters really seems to know what they're doing with their lives and they all spend their time... Read more
Published 21 months ago by J. Brand
A very slow starter
I nearly gave up on this book. The first half of it was so dull. The characters and their lives, however earnestly real they are, were charmless and dreary and I could rouse no... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Mrs. Margaret Gallaghrt
Strange but good
This book is nice, really nice. It tackles difficult subjects such as marriage break up, sibling rivalry, dementia, mania, workaholicism and more without being utterly depressing. Read more
Published 22 months ago by D. Thurgood
An unusual book in many ways
Bit of a tricky one to review this. I did enjoy it, as the four stars suggest, but it was a sometimes frustrating read. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Grr
Family in crisis! Will quirkiness pull them through?
This is a tale of a dysfunctional American family - an academic couple and their two daughters, they are four very different characters... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Annabel Gaskell
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