Office Girl

By Joe Meno

"Meno's gentle, hip, humorous, and innovative portrayal of 2 Chicago misfits...dramatizes that anguished and awkward passage among felony age and real adulthood."
--Booklist, "Core assortment: New grownup Fiction"

Named "Best New Novel by way of a Chicagoan" and "Best booklet for the disenchanted Artist in we all" by means of the Chicago Reader

Selected through The Believer's readers as a favourite fiction paintings of 2012

One of DailyCandy's top Books of 2012

"An off-kilter romance doubles as an artwork circulate in Joe Meno's novel. the radical reads as a parody of art-school types...and as a tribute to their devil-may-care spirit. Meno impressively captures post-adolescent girl angst and lack of confidence. clean and humorous, the pictures additionally encapsulate the mortification, confusion and pleasure that outline such a lot of 20-something existences."
--The manhattan occasions e-book Review

"Wonderful storytelling panache...Odile is a brash, moody, likable younger lady navigating the stumbling blocks of caddish boyfriends and awful jobs, embarking at the type of sentimental trip that literary heroines were making for the reason that Fanny Burney's Evelina within the 1770s. Tenderhearted Jack is the awkward, quiet variety that the ladies in Jane Austen's novels disregard until eventually book's finish. he's passionate about tape-recording Chicago's ambient noises in order that he can simulate town within the defense of his bed room, 'a unmarried city he has invented made up of not anything yet sound.' Mr. Meno excels at shooting the way in which that budding love could make humans think courageous and freshly alive to their surroundings...the tale of the connection has a candy simplicity."
--The Wall highway Journal

"In Joe Meno's new novel, set within the final 12 months of the twentieth century, artwork college dropout Odile Neff and novice sound artist Jack Blevins paintings deadening workplace jobs; gush approximately indie rock, French movie, and imprecise comedian publication artists; and steadily begin a dating that doubles as an artwork move. they're, in different phrases, the 20-something doyens of popular culture and their story of promiscuous roommates, on-again/off-again exes, and awkward intercourse is punctuated at the web page by means of lovable little doodles, black and white pictures (of, say, a topless girl in a Stormtrooper mask), and monologues which could simply go for Belle & Sebastian lyrics ("It doesn’t pay to be a dreamer simply because all they truly wish you to do is solution the phone")."
--Publishers Weekly (Pick of the Week)

"Meno has built a snowflake-delicate inquiry into alienation and longing. Illustrated with drawings and pictures and formed via gentle empathy, buoyant mind's eye, and bittersweet wit, this wistful, provocative, off-kilter love tale affirms the bonds solid by means of artwork and story."
--Booklist (starred review)

No one dies in Office Girl. not anyone talks concerning the foreign political state of affairs. there's no point out of any fiscal cave in. not anything happens in the course of a global War.

Instead, this novel is set youngsters doing attention-grabbing issues within the ultimate moments of the final century. Odile is a stunning twenty-three-year-old art-school dropout, a minor vandal, and a hopeless dreamer. Jack is a twenty-five-year-old shirker who is so much satisfied taking pictures the never-ending noises of the town on his out-of-date tape recorder. jointly they choose to commence their very own paintings circulate in defiance of a latest tradition made boring by way of either the tedious and the most obvious. Set in February 1999—just prior to the tip of 1 global and the start of another—Office Girl is the tale of 2 humans stuck among the uncertainty in their futures and the all-too-brief moments of recent life.

Joe Meno's most recent novel additionally good points black-and-white illustrations by way of popular artist Cody Hudson and images through visionary photographer Todd Baxter.

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For those who had a fucking outstanding guitarist, then candy baby of Mine by means of GNR 7. road to Hell through AC/DC eight. Too speedy for romance via Mötley Crüe nine. back, if you happen to had an awesome guitarist, sizzling for instructor by way of Van Halen 10. finish the set with Cum on suppose the Noise by way of Quiet revolt 5 At her highschool, Gretchen used to be punk rock and had a name for beating different women up. all of us bought into hassle again then, yet Gretchen was once often called the lady who beloved to struggle. It was once why I loved her quite a bit, possibly. Being punk again then for many youngsters intended how you dressed generally, no longer what files you played—maybe that’s how it nonetheless is in a few locations, I dunno. all of the children who have been geeks or fags or nerds or wastoids in junior excessive all started dressing fucked-up once they hit highschool, with the torn outfits and security pins and make-up and soiled hair, and never one among them had ever heard of the MC5 or manhattan Dolls, yet what it gave a few of them was once a gaggle identification and in addition a few braveness, possibly. youngsters in junior excessive who had as soon as gotten the crap kicked out of them every day, good, now they'd get pointed at and laughed at, yet not anyone may fuck with them they usually didn’t need to take anyone’s shit ever back. Being punk intended having whatever to struggle opposed to. That’s what occurred with Gretchen. by means of her junior yr at mom McCauley Catholic Academy for younger women, she were considering a minimum of 5 full-on fistfights and suspended 3 times already. She regularly bought detentions for her failure to stick to the uniform; she have been despatched domestic numerous instances to alter her hair and make-up and garments. She was once nonetheless serving demerits for having her hair dyed purple, and needed to spend time in detention each Tuesday. It used to be what made me like placing out along with her, i assume. She did the issues i needed i'll do yet didn’t have the heart to, probably. Like with every thing. okay, so the fourth in-school suspension Gretchen got—the one she continuously talked about—was for fucking up Stacy Bensen. Stacy Bensen, the woman who had run for president of scholar council below the motto Stacy Bensen—why? simply because you’re too lazy to do it, and had received. Stacy had made the undesirable mistake of calling Gretchen “a fats dyke. ” After it occurred, Gretchen instructed the fucking tale such a lot of times—at the counter of Snackville Junction, in a sales space at Wojos, within the crappy Escort, at events, to her sister, to my brother, to my little sister, to her dad, within the car parking zone of Haunted Trails, to humans we didn’t even know—that i'll inform precisely what occurred, most likely larger than she might inform it, possibly. additionally, while she informed it she often passed over crucial half, which i can't do, I promise you. okay, so it went down like this: in the future after remedial English type, a interval within which all Gretchen did used to be write her favourite band names in black ink on her fingers and legs—ramones, the descendents, the clash—Gretchen determined that she’d had it, she didn't like tuition. None folks cherished school—well, I did, yet i'd have by no means admitted it to anybody—but for Gretchen it used to be worse.

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