Customer Reviews

Hairstyles Of The Damned (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Brian Oswald is a junior at an all boys Catholic high school, and his best friend, Gretchen, is a slightly overweight punk girl with dyed pink hair. Brian's parents are going through a slow but steady separation while Gretchen's mother is recently deceased. Both live in a town in Chicago that is still dealing with fairly severe segregation issues. Both are attempting to find their way through the various labyrinthine perils that make up the high school experience for most kids. Both want desperately to belong and feel cared for, traipsing around wearing a façade in order to be accepted, making sure they fit neatly into little niches. And yet both are also struggling to grasp their own individual identities.

Like most students, music is a huge part of Brian and Gretchen's lives. Brian loves metal and rock music, while Gretchen is "into" the punk scene. Brian's life unfolds in front of him like the meticulously arranged order of lyrical songs on a mixed tape. If only the events within life itself were so meticulously arranged...

Sounds like the typical plot for a plethora of novels based on adolescence, insecurity, and discovering what it truly means to be oneself, right? True enough. However, Joe Meno accomplishes this task with an incredibly authentic flair, drawing the reader back to when he/she was in high school and forcing his readers to take a trip down memory lane. From the music and clothing styles, down to the slang and manners of speech, Meno captures the true essence of what it meant to be a high school student in the 90's, and what it still means. However, the lessons presented herein are easily applicable, and the text easily accessible, to those of any generation.

There are many lessons to be learned in high school that go far beyond proper grammar, memorizing constitutional amendments, and how to be stylish within one's clique, and Meno reminds us of this fact with brutally accurate honesty. Hairstyles of the Damned is fun, witty, memorable, and at times subtly profound. The characters are astonishingly well-crafted and loveable. I don't often read books more than once, but this is one I just might find time to read again in the future. I loved this book! Very highly recommended.

"You think you're so individualistic, but you're not. You guys...you're like the anti-snob snobs" (Meno, 259).

I hate to say this, but Joe Meno's Hairstyles of the Damned just might have surpassed Arthur Nersessian's The F____-Up as my favorite novel published by that greatest and gutsiest of small presses, Akashic Books. This is no small feat considering that Akashic also publishes two of my own books, Las Cucarachas and Boy Genius.

That said, (enough plug for me), Hairstyles is an utterly delightful riot and I'm so glad that my publisher recommended it to me to read (he mentioned that the book featured irreverent kids as does mine.) It's true the book doesn't have much plot in the conventional sense, but who cares when it can make you feel and care so much for its characters?

Not a single moment or character in this book rings false. What's more, even the tiniest supporting character is drawn with the perfect detail that captures who they are. This is especially the case for the adult characters in the book. Anyone who is interested in learning how to write novels can learn a great deal from this book. The book may appear to some to be just the ramblings of an adolescent, but boy is it well crafted.

Particularly memorable is Gretchen, the girl who is best friends with the protagonist. This book makes you remember just how intense everything feels when you are young.

It's quite a formidable book with a unique voice that forces you to read on. I so regret that I couldn't make it to Meno's reading in New York. This is a truly great and original book that makes other books by writers of Meno's generation seem tame and frivolous.

I picked up this book because the cover really appealed to me--but little did I know that what was inside was going to feel so much like my own life. From the language (spot on) to the places (so real) to the situations (just right), Hairstyles of the Damned reads like your high school experience. That is, if your high school experience was being the person that didn't fit in, and wanted nothing more than to do just that. There are parts in this book that are almost hard to read it's so much a slice of teen expereince. I think this book is perfect for those of us that lived through it AND for those that are just living through it now. If I was 16, I would read this book 1000 times and every time it would feel just right.

"Hairstyles of the Damned" presents some of most real, most vivid characters I've read in any recent novel: Brian, a funny, lonely, metalhead in love with his best friend, Gretchen, a punk girl who beats other girls up, and who just happens to be overweight. From its realistic depiction of growing up, going through sex and your parent's divorce and finding out about bands whose music changes your life, this book was both hilarious and sad, the kind of stuff I like.

Brian Oswald is a total loser, a teenage dweeb who's not very popular and who can't decide if he's part of the metal crowd or the punk crowd or any other crowd. He hates his (Catholic) high school, he obsesses about sex and music, and he thinks he might be in love with his overweight childhood friend, Gretchen. In other words, Brian is just your typical adolescent who wants, more than anything else, to belong without seeming to conform.

Whether you enjoy Meno's latest novel (published, appropriately enough, by Punk Planet Books) may well depend on (1) if you think "Catcher on the Rye" really needs to be updated every couple of years and (2) how high your tolerance is for reading 270 pages of 1990s suburban adolescent lingua: "OK, so I was going to this punk show, my first ever, I guess, and I had my dad's beautiful black combat boots on, these nice twenty-hole lace-ups, and it was like eight at night, and I started up the stairs and I was taking them by twos because I didn't want my dad to have time to say anything to stop me, and also I didn't want him to see my [expletive] feet."

Not much happens to Brian and to his friends--there's no plot to speak of--and the relentless, mindless post-punk lingo is a vogue that I, for one, did not really need to relive. But, still, I couldn't put this book down. Part of Meno's success stems from his ability to make you care: even though Brian is probably the "type" I would have avoided in my youth, I could still sympathize and empathize with his self-induced angst. The other coup is the consistency of tone; Brian's voice is flawlessly rendered, without a single false note, and his character is instantly recognizable and believable without being formulaic. "Hairstyles" is, above all, a triumph of style over substance (and I mean that in a positive way); it captures faithfully the experience of being a kid, no matter how mundane and unexceptional that experience seems to us now.

Lest anyone begin to pigeonhole this book with 'young people fiction' or try to make it a punk rockers' anthem, let me just get in a quick two cents worth. I am a gray-haired 50-year-old teacher of high school English. I am not Joe Meno's mom or auntie or nana (though I'm hoping they are ever-so-proud of him). I heard Joe's interview with Scott Simon on NPR and ordered the book the same day. (When it arrived, my 87-year-old mother read the first few pages and then put it down like the cover was inked in acid. "That book has the F word on every page!" Boy, did she miss out by not reading it!) I have to say, my adolescence took place during the '60's--different music, similar issues. Meno captures and distills on the page those ever-so-frustrating and at times enraging moments in the teen years when we all want to scream, "I'm not an S.O.B.!"--especially those of us who were weird loner people with few friends. Right on. This is not a novel for a generation or a culture, it is a novel which will speak to those for whom enduring high school was tantamount to running a gauntlet made up of bloodthirsty, jeering peers and adults. Don't tell my principal, the schoolboard or that certain faction of adults who feel they must control what young people read: I will pass this book on--secretly--to my students. It will be like, you know, subversive.

I only bought this book because it was on the 20% rack at Barnes and Noble, and it had a cool cover. But I'm so glad I did. I didn't grow up punk or in Chicago, but I still related to the struggles these kids faced in trying to (not so) simply grow up. It's one of those books that you want to read cover to cover in one day. I loved the unique writing style and voice. It's hard not to fall in love with these characters. It made me laugh out loud, and it, at times, made me want to cry. Most of all, it left me thinking. I highly recommend it.

The book's about a punky, runty kid from Chicago, and his transformation from mute dork to reasonably cool cat, with a share of affection from the outcast girls from his catholic high school scene, all while the parents in the nabe slowly go crazy for one reason or another. And it's pretty good - it sticks with you, the way it focuses on how sex- and music-obsessed kids could be, and the way it evokes a place of tough-talking foolish youth. Great title and cover, too.

On the other hand, it's not really a pretty book, with messed up families being really quite messed up, and not a lot of transcendence, although quite a few jokes. So I'd characterize the goal of the book as clear-headed reality-based sociology rather than aspirational romanticization.

And I kind of miss aspirational romanticization.

"Hairstyles of the Damned" was an impulse Border's purchase. The design is cool, the title is cool, and the acknowledgments page has a special section devoted to people/entities who "suck it". Acknowledging people you hate: how awesome is that. I read the first couple paragraphs of the first chapter, flipped through a little, and I was hooked.

The book is written in an extremely colloquial style. Very fresh, very young, even edgy. At first the style really draws you in, since it's written so conversationally. But eventually the adolescent vernacular, the frequent "likes," and the constant insertion of the F-word tend to get a little annoying. Around half way through the book, the edginess starts to lose its edgy quality and instead just becomes tiresome.

Part of the book's problem is that it basically relies on this tone to carry the novel. The plot is very thin at best, nonexistent at worst. The normal mishaps and insecurities of adolescence are entertaining for a few chapters, but once again, around half-way through the book I found myself anxious for something to finally start happening.

The characters of the book are poignant and well-drawn. They are life-like and vulnerable in their own ways, at least the main characters Brian and Gretchen. But the larger cast of characters rests heavily on archetypes of the adolescent experience. We get the punks, the stoners, the jocks, the nerds, the sluts, etc., etc. Of course, we are reminded that despite their superficial differences, all these characters are similar, each of them acting out of the powerful adolescent craving to belong. If only this were a slightly fresher insight.

The events of the book, as loosely connected as they are, suffer from a similar problem. Nothing really seems to happen that's not taken out of an "adolescence casebook". The main character has problems fitting in, he has trouble relating to girls, he has an on again/off again crush on his best friend, his parents are splitting up, he hates school. None of this is new enough to be worth another book in the legions of books about adolescence.

This is not a bad book. The characters feel realistic, the style is engaging, at least initially, and it convincingly expresses the pain of adolescence. It just feels as if it's been done before. It feels like a wordier, less powerful version of "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." Or, a less funny version of "How I Paid for College". If you love those books, you might love this book too. But I'd recommend reading them first.

Truly one of the best books about growing up and into the unknown world I've ever read. The dialogue, the places, the feelings are all real. Thanks for writing this book, Joe Meno.