Joe Meno

Book of Extraordinary Tragedies Joe Meno

From the best-selling author of Hairstyles of the Damned comes a moving novel about the impossibility of fate and family

"Meno knows how to make you love his characters, want what they want. But don't think he's going to let things turn out well for them."
--New York Times Book Review

"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, author of The House of Broken Angels

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 South Side of Chicago, the pair were inseparable until each was forced to confront the absurdity of tragedy at an early age: Aleks lives with hearing loss, while Isobel struggles with preposterous expectations from herself and her family.

Both 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 to move back into the family home with her three-year-old daughter, everything changes for Aleks. Over the course of several months, he becomes deeply involved in the endless challenges that surround his relatives. Once Isobel begins playing cello again and announces her intention to audition for an amateur symphony, 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?