From the best-selling author Joe Meno, a moving novel about the impossibility of fate and family
“Joe Meno is one of those Chicago writers floating around so long that we take his sturdiness for granted. His latest, though, Book of Extraordinary Tragedies, (Sept. 6) the tale of Evergreen Park musical prodigies who reunite after ages of failure and loss, is a career best, a reminder of how unusually hopeful and buoyant Meno has remained all this time. It’s a charmer and a breakthrough.”
—Chicago Tribune, Fall Books Preview
"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." —Booklist, starred review
Aleksandar and Isobel are siblings and former classical music prodigies, once destined for greatness. 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.
Now in their twenties, they find themselves encountering ridiculous jobs, unfulfilling romantic relationships, and the outrageousness of ordinary life. 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.
But 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. Once Isobel begins playing cello again, Aleks comes to see a world of possibility and wonder in the lives of his extraordinarily complicated family.
Told in Aleks’s exuberant voice, and full of as much comedy as tragedy, this entertaining novel asks, Is it ever truly possible to separate our fates from those we’ve come to love?
Genre: Literary Fiction
“Joe Meno is one of those Chicago writers floating around so long that we take his sturdiness for granted. His latest, though, Book of Extraordinary Tragedies, (Sept. 6) the tale of Evergreen Park musical prodigies who reunite after ages of failure and loss, is a career best, a reminder of how unusually hopeful and buoyant Meno has remained all this time. It’s a charmer and a breakthrough.”
—Chicago Tribune, Fall Books Preview
"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." —Booklist, starred review
Aleksandar and Isobel are siblings and former classical music prodigies, once destined for greatness. 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.
Now in their twenties, they find themselves encountering ridiculous jobs, unfulfilling romantic relationships, and the outrageousness of ordinary life. 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.
But 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. Once Isobel begins playing cello again, Aleks comes to see a world of possibility and wonder in the lives of his extraordinarily complicated family.
Told in Aleks’s exuberant voice, and full of as much comedy as tragedy, this entertaining novel asks, Is it ever truly possible to separate our fates from those we’ve come to love?
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Set on Chicago's southside, this is a quirky, tender, and absurdly funny coming-of-age novel about not only caring for the ones we love, but also tending to the dreams they have for our future. It's a novel about work and the relentless grind of surviving paycheck to paycheck. Joe Meno writes beautifully of the way tragic stories become a kind of inheritance in this bittersweet love letter to the immigrants who built Chicago." - Leigh Stein
"I don't know how Joe Meno does it - if I did know, I'd copy him. This book has such velocity that it generates wind, yet it is meditative and steeped in love, music, and human connection. It's stunning." - Luis Alberto Urrea
"'Catastrophe will never let you down,' we're told in Joe Meno's deeply felt new novel, one that plumbs the depths of family, all the painful ways we're bound to the people who shaped us, and all the generations previous. But having been a fan of Meno's work for so long, I also know that he will never let you down, that he will find some measure of the extraordinary in any story, some deeply human and beautiful thing that keeps us reading. A sensitive and imaginative work by a writer who deserves every reader." - Kevin Wilson
"I don't know how Joe Meno does it - if I did know, I'd copy him. This book has such velocity that it generates wind, yet it is meditative and steeped in love, music, and human connection. It's stunning." - Luis Alberto Urrea
"'Catastrophe will never let you down,' we're told in Joe Meno's deeply felt new novel, one that plumbs the depths of family, all the painful ways we're bound to the people who shaped us, and all the generations previous. But having been a fan of Meno's work for so long, I also know that he will never let you down, that he will find some measure of the extraordinary in any story, some deeply human and beautiful thing that keeps us reading. A sensitive and imaginative work by a writer who deserves every reader." - Kevin Wilson
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