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Julia Holmes

Meeks Paperback – July 20, 2010

by Julia Holmes (Author)

11 ratings

3.1 on Goodreads

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No woman will have Ben without a proper bachelor’s suit . . . and the tailor refuses to make him one. Back from war with a nameless enemy, Ben finds that his mother is dead and his family home has been reassigned by the state. As if that isn’t enough, he must now find a wife, or he’ll be made a civil servant and given a permanent spot in one of the city’s oppressive factories.

Meanwhile, Meeks, a foreigner who lives in the park and imagines he’s a member of the police, is hunted by the overzealous Brothers of Mercy. Meeks’ survival depends on his peculiar friendship with a police captain—but will that be enough to prevent his execution at the annual Independence Day celebration?

A dark satire rendered with the slapstick humor of a Buster Keaton film, Julia Holmes’ debut marries the existentialism of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground to the strange charm of a Haruki Murakami novel. Meeks portrays a world at once hilarious and disquieting, in which frustrated revolutionaries and hopeful youths suffer alongside the lost and the condemned, just for a chance at the permanent bliss of marriage and a slice of sugar-frosted Independence Day cake.

Julia Holmes was born in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and grew up in the Middle East, Texas, and New York, where she is currently an assistant editor at Rolling Stone. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program in fiction.

Print length

189 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Small Beer Press
Publication date

July 20, 2010
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

9781931520652
ISBN-13

978-1931520652
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A highly imaginative debut finds a stark Darwinian logic in a rigidly hierarchical society. In Holmes's unnamed dystopia, everyone is ascribed a place strictly enforced by the police, with the young Bachelors bearing the responsibility of finding a wife, an accomplishment that will secure them a place in society. If, as in the case of protagonist Ben, a wife is not secured (due to a kind of perverse resentment and no money to order the requisite pale-colored courting suit), he falls to the retribution of the Brothers of Mercy, thugs who sweep down on the unsuccessful and conscript them as laborers and executioners. The story cuts between the plight of Ben, stuck in his black mourning suit unable to better himself, and a doomed, delusional character called Meeks, who lives in the park. Both characters—fatherless, steeped in sentimental memories of a long-lost childhood and the love of their mothers—now give off the stink of failure, and are by turns rescued and denounced by their brothers. Holmes has fashioned a terrifying and utterly convincing world in which the perfect human being is one stripped of all illusions. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Meeks is a wild, woolly, sly, gentle and wry first novel. . . . It's a book whose singular vision keeps returning to me at odd moments, one of the most original and readable novels that's come my way in a long time." --The New York Times Book Review | Editor's Choice

"The novel is a postmodern parable about American passion and paranoia, like The Great Gatsby as told by Don DeLillo." --The New York Observer

"The satire here has plenty of bite, but instead of winking at the reader, Holmes evokes her world with luminous prose." --Los Angeles Times

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1931520658
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Small Beer Press (July 20, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 189 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781931520652
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1931520652
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #594,153 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,277 in Political Fiction (Books)
- #2,469 in Coming of Age Fantasy (Books)
- #4,980 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)

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M. Dillon

Good book for a discussion group

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 28, 2010

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I was lead to this book after reading a review in Entertainment magazine, which compared it to the Hunger Games. So with that comparison in my head I started this book. First, it is extraordinarily well written and twists of grammar had me re-reading sentences again.
The book falls into three sections of stories revolving around a fictional town. Meeks is the town bum (and also shares the same name as the town father), Ben is a bachelor returned from the war and a story of two brothers plays out as well. The author plops you into this world with no backstory or effort to help the reader understand some basic fundamentals. It took me until half the book to really get enough of what was expected of the characters to THEN really understand their predicament. I liked it overall, but think a little more explanation of what was going on would have enhanced the book. For instance, what happened to the women when they were taken "to the farm"? Why are they fighting an unseen enemy? Who the HECK was Captain Meeks and where did he come from? Why are there postcards blowing around with pictures from places they think the enemy lives? These questions just scratch the surface and I have not given anything away in terms of spoiler.
I see it as good book for an advanced high school class or book club, because it would be fun to debate all the questions with someone. To read alone for enjoyment though, it just left me wondering, huh?

Helpful

kelly

Steam-punk futurism in a dystopian landscape

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 24, 2011

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Meeks is the story of a bachelor whose youth was wasted fighting an undefined enemy in a protracted war. Penniless and without prospects, he must marry or perish as a civil servant (or worse, be put to death):

". . . the official exhortation to pursue one's own happiness or be put to the task of generating happiness for others, or worse-to be not in the picture."

It is also about a park-dwelling, delusional man (name-sake of the state's founder!) who aspires to wearing a policeman's uniform, carrying a gun and defending a state that has never held a place for him.

The setting is a sort of steam-punk dystopia--evoking a cold, minimalist future that in many ways harks back to Victorian ideals and early 19C concerns. The lushly rendered, highly stylized setting serves as a striking contrast to a poverty of human connection that will feel hauntingly familiar to modern readers. The result is an uncanny sense of familiarity and strangeness, as if you have been given the rare opportunity to step out of your life and watch it from afar. The writing is spare and beautiful and highly readable.

This dystopian novel is not about whys, hows or wherefores and is not going to satisfy those readers who like taking things apart in order to see how they work. This is a novel of ideas, yes, but also of gut-wrenching feelings, personal and social failings and, ultimately loss.

One person found this helpful

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Chris A

Dark world punctuated by color and sometimes hope

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 9, 2010

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It took me a while to adjust to the language of this understated world with its severe social restraints, but once I did I was hooked and lost myself into it. Orwellian is an easy descriptor for the world created in Meeks, but it is its own unique world onto itself. Impossible things happen in this world, but then I would get a chill and realize that in fact, maybe, it had already happened in our real world but no one noticed? On top of the fascinating world created in Meeks, the writing is very good and a pleasure to read. Great descriptions that make you feel and smell the surroundings. I've found my thoughts drifting back to Meeks frequently in the week since I finished reading it--for me a sign of a worthwhile read..

9 people found this helpful

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Robert G.

I don't understand you at all

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 19, 2011

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The title of this review is a direct quote from the book, and nicely summarizes my thoughts as I read it. I just didn't follow what this book was about. I did read it to the end, so it gets an extra star for not making me toss it out. I hoped it went somewhere, but it just didn't seem to have anything for me to grab hold of. I'm glad the other reviewers found some meaning in this book, but I will be going back to authors I know and like.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 16, 2015

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A short dystopian novel, simple and striking and melancholy.

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Diz

Dream-like...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 7, 2010

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The story is set in a post-war city. The war only happened a generation or so ago. The enemy was close - just over the river that runs into the nearby sea, up on the hill tops capped with rows of fine pine trees.

The city below has become in some ways fossilised into a ritual way of life with wretched but ever-optimistic Bachelors, Civil Servants dressed in their grey workers smocks, the mysterious but clean smelling Brothers of Mercy, and young happy families. In the background, there are the Sheds, talked about with a sense of dread, but never visited, even if elderly relatives may have been evicted and removed to them.

The story revolves around two characters: Ben, a Bachelor, living in a Bachelor House, but seemingly doomed to stay a Bachelor as he cannot get hold of a fine grey suit but is stuck in his foul-smelling black suit of mourning, and the eponymous Meeks, living outdoors under the statue of the city's saviour Captain Meeks, perhaps a rookie policeman, trying to impress his erstwhile superior, Bedge.

Ben's story is told in the third person, Meeks as an internal first-person narrative. These stories are interspersed with 'The Brother's Tale' and 'The Father's Tale'. All men, you'll notice. The only women are memories of mothers and possible wives seen from a distance. Although the story is set in later summer, early autumn and is full of colour, sunsets and rises, it feels remarkably bleak.

What holds you though, is the writing. It is so cool and stylish, it reminded me of ' Gattaca ', in some ways of ' The Handmaid's Tale ' but overlaid with a Kafkaesque feeling of nightmares in broad daylight. It also has a feel of Ursula K Le Guinn's ' The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas ' both stylistically and perhaps thematically. It is, as stated, so cool and bleak and yet strangely full of sunshine that it becomes disturbing.

It's only a short book - about 189 pages long - but it manages to conjure up a powerful picture of a stratified and desperately unhappy, almost claustrophobic world. That all sounds terribly depressing, but the writing hooks you, draws you in to this world and you have to stay to the end.

Definitely a writer to watch.

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Meeks Paperback – July 20, 2010

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