Tender as Hellfire
“Features some of the liveliest characters that one is apt to meet in a contemporary novel. Vividly described.”—Publishers Weekly“Extremely vivid. . . . Any number of novels have been written about unhappy childhoods and bizarre families, but this one surpasses many.”—Kirkus ReviewsJoe Meno limns...
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“Features some of the liveliest characters that one is apt to meet in a contemporary novel. Vividly described.”—Publishers Weekly“Extremely vivid. . . . Any number of novels have been written about unhappy childhoods and bizarre families, but this one surpasses many.”—Kirkus ReviewsJoe Meno limns a near-fantastical world of trailer park floozies, broken-down ’76 Impalas, lost glass eyes, and the daily experiences of two boys trying to make sense of their random, sharp lives. Joe Meno is the author of the novels Hairstyles of the Damned, The Boy Detective Fails,and How the Hula Girl Sings. He was the winner of the 2003 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction and is a professor of creative writing at Columbia College Chicago.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9781933354309 (1933354305)
Publish date: August 1st 2007
Publisher: Akashic Books
Pages no: 220
Edition language: English
Joe Meno is an amazing author. You can tell a lot about how good an author is by reading his or her first book and Tender As Hellfire has all the elements of a well written story that will keep you intrigued from start to finish. Dough is the narrator. You see the events unfold through his eyes a...
This debut novel also has a too neat ending (see review for _The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman_), but its clever, multivalent, simultaneously denotative and connotative title saves it from 3 stars.