A quirky short novel about a place where marital bliss is all: a man without a bachelor suit has little likelihood of finding a wife and living out his days eating sweets at picnics.

(The publisher gave me a copy of the book at Book Expo America, where I also enjoyed chatting with author Julia Holmes.)

I wrote about Meeks on my blog here. ( )

Alternates telling the story of two men in a society where a portion of the population is delegated to manufacture happiness for others to enjoy. Ben is a bachelor whose only hope to escape the work house is to have a girl choose him for marriage and Meeks (named for the society's founder) is a bum who plays at being a police officer. Many aspects of the society are portrayed as ridiculous (black humor): constant vigilance against an unseen/unknown enemy, the absolute necessity of having proper attire to announce your current station, the complete (although not always physical) separation of the different castes/age groups, and especially the illusion of happiness. It is hard to swallow forced marriages and sweets as the ultimate happiness worth sacrificing choice to build a society around. Her prose is poignant and beautiful. It reads more like a short story in that you get dropped into a world and never quite grasp everything. I particularly appreciated Ben's musings on choosing insanity (an unlimited life inside your head) to the current restricted reality. Wish the story were more developed (more novel, less novella) and gave insight into the life and thoughts of a non-mother female character. ( )

“Duly noted: 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.”

Meeks is the first dystopian novel that I’ve ever read, and I’m glad I started the genre with an exceptionally good title. For in this imaginary world (if indeed it is imaginary rather than futuristic), nothing is as it seems. The complexities of life are narrowed down to the need for a good pale suit to woo in, and an appetite for lovely and varied cakes.

Two main characters alternate in the novel: Ben and Meeks. Ben is desperate to find a pale suit, because that’s what all the suitable bachelors wear in the city park, flirting with women and insuring their actual health and future by finding a wife. You see, there’s a deadline...an unmarried man is either forced to become a civil servant (who can only wear gray smocks) or be killed. This desire to be married doesn’t appear to have anything to do with romance, instead it’s just a means to continue living and enjoying the sweets that the ladies provide in abundance. That, and the ability to wear lovely seasonal sweaters in pale colors (all the happy married men wear them prominently). But all Ben has is a cheap black suit, and despite his efforts, he can’t get a pale one. He resides temporarily in a home for bachelors, where suitable “manly” hobbies are assigned to the residents. His fear is tenable: “what if he was becoming, or had become, an unlovable man? What if the toxin of failure was already coursing through his veins, what if he was already stinking of defeat?"

The character of Meeks is a bit more complicated. He really doesn’t know who he is, and his namesake, Captain Meeks, is rather ambiguous. The city park boasts a statue of Captain Meeks, and his poster appears in certain city buildings. Is he a hero? Or is there an alternative reason? Our character Meeks appears to be something of a bum, one who insists that he’s helping the police in different investigations. Is he, or not? I don’t want to reveal spoilers, so I must word all of this carefully. Suffice to say, no character is typical. Are his police buddies sincere?



The environment around these characters is bizarre: the city park is home to most every function, and there’s little talk of life outside the park, or work, or even family activities. Women are rarely mentioned in terms of romance, only as mothers (who seem to only bear sons) or as dainty little things who pack luscious picnics for their chosen man. And then there’s the mints…it seems the citizens are all overly fond of the tiny foul-tasting mints made right there in town in less than appealing factories. Between candy and cakes, little else of nutrition is mentioned. In fact, throughout the book, it even appears that the only real places of color appear in the park-other locations tend to be dark, gray, and gritty.

So what’s it all about? Reading this with a mind to a review was difficult-I was trying too hard to find meaning. I tried another tack, to just enjoy the novelty, and that made the difference. You have to let go of the need for explanation and symmetry to fall into the story. That isn’t to say there are no undercurrents of meaning: at times I wondered if the mints were actually a commentary on the pharmaceutical industry that numbs people into stagnation. Then again, the focus on fluffy frostings and sweets, rather than the fruits that Ben craved, could be an illustration of society’s dependence on immediate pleasure and sensual appetites over moral fortitude. Even without a deeper meaning, the story holds your attention and the writing is original and crisp.

Special thanks to Jedediah Berry of Small Beer Press for the Review Copy. ( )

In this cleverly imagined novel, we are in a somewhat familiar world, sometime after a lengthy, drawn out war with the now nameless, elusive enemy. Police keep order and some thuggish types called the Brothers of Mercy fill in the gaps, so to speak. The tinge of failure hovers just around the corner all through this story.

We follow two characters, "Meeks" (ironically named after one of this society's heroes), a foreigner and perhaps delusional. He lives in the park and thinks he is a policeman. He seems to have been befriended by one of the real policemen in the area. We also follow Ben, a young soldier who returns home after his mother's death to discover that the family home has been reassigned. He manages to get a black mourning suit from a old family friend and tailor, who also sets him up with a room at the local bachelor house. Basically, Ben now has one season to obtain the pale suit of a bachelor looking for a wife and obtain said wife before the Independence Day celebration. Failure to obtain a wife means a life in the factories. Ben is penniless and is desperate to get that pale suit and time is running out!

Of course, the fates of our two men will eventually become intertwined. This is a slyly humorous tale that I enjoyed very much. Holmes, through her story, pokes fun at a lot of things, but in the end I came away without a definitive sense of what she might be criticizing. Is it marriage? Is it rigid societal norms? It is an imaginary enemy? Is it 'the other'? When I think of the many other dystopias and dystopian satires I have read, I have a clear idea of what the overall critique is, but not here. So, while I enjoyed the story of Ben & Meeks, I am left feeling that I may have missed something (and obviously still thinking about it!) ( )

I can't help but use the work Kafkaesque when thinking about this novel, though the jacket copy helpfully provides Haruki Murakami as another, quite valid, point of comparison. This is in part the story of Ben, returned from military service and thrust into a "Bachelor House" from which he must attract a wife or face the consequences of becoming a "civil servant" -- a faceless municipal drone. My academic field is the nineteenth century novel, where the consequences of spinsterhood weigh heavily on women; the male take on the problem is intriguing, and has me speculating about the world of the novel and how it got there. It's also the story of Meeks, a homeless man who lives in the city park, and feels an odd kinship with his namesake, the founder of his society. The outcome for both characters feels inevitable, particularly in the shadow of a third, less-frequent narrative voice which provides a prologue, but the story is nonetheless compelling. Both main characters keep the reader at an emotional distance, which fits the dystopic setting effectively. An impressive first novel for Holmes; I'll be eager to see where she goes next. ( )