Book description
Meet the Caspers, a family beset by cowardice and anxiety. Jonathan is
a palaeontologist, searching in vain for a prehistoric squid. His wife,
Madeline, an animal behaviourist, cannot explain why the pigeons she is
studying are becoming increasingly aggressive. Their older daughter
Amelia is a disappointed teenage revolutionary, while their younger,
Thisbe, has become a devout Christian. Meanwhile, the girls’
grandfather, Henry, is slowly absenting himself from life: each day he
gives away a possession and speaks one word fewer, until the time comes
when he will have spoken his last ever word. Before that can happen,
however, Jonathan and Madeline decide to separate - and, suddenly, each
family member has to confront their fears about the world in which they
live.
Set in the run-up to the 2004 US presidential election, The Great Perhaps
is a tale of the nuclear family in the nuclear age; a witty, revealing
story about just how complicated and ambiguous modern life can be.
'Darkly funny, lyrical and shrewdly observant' Tom Perrotta
'A big, generous-hearted American family novel . . . Meno's characters
bristle with humanity, and I think this book will find a huge audience
for its wisdom and life-affirming, but unsentimental, qualities' Irvine
Welsh, Daily Telegraph
Joe Meno is the author of four previous novels and two story
collections. He is a professor of creative writing at Columbia College,
Chicago.
