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34th out of 135 books
—
117 voters
Office Girl
by
Joe Meno,
Cody Hudson , Todd Baxter
No one dies in Office Girl. Nobody talks about the international political situation. There is no mention of any economic collapse. Nothing takes place during a World War.
Instead, this novel is about young people doing interesting things in the final moments of the last century. Odile is a lovely twenty-three-year-old art-school dropout, a minor vandal, and a hopeless drea...more
Instead, this novel is about young people doing interesting things in the final moments of the last century. Odile is a lovely twenty-three-year-old art-school dropout, a minor vandal, and a hopeless drea...more
Hardcover, 224 pages
Published
July 3rd 2012
by Akashic Books
(first published June 28th 2012)
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I am not the right audience for this book.
It's about an early twenties artist lady who makes bad romantic decision after bad romantic decision, then meets Jack, an early twenties artist fellow and they decide to be artistic together in their own way.
This summer, my boyfriend dragged me to a super-hipster concert at a hipster-favored bar. It was his birthday, it was a free show, and he'd been looking forward to it for a while so I was a good sport. I stood there and did my best to pretend I was...more
It's about an early twenties artist lady who makes bad romantic decision after bad romantic decision, then meets Jack, an early twenties artist fellow and they decide to be artistic together in their own way.
This summer, my boyfriend dragged me to a super-hipster concert at a hipster-favored bar. It was his birthday, it was a free show, and he'd been looking forward to it for a while so I was a good sport. I stood there and did my best to pretend I was...more
Allow me to sum up my feelings for this book through song.
I probably liked this book because it made me nostalgic more than for the overall quality of writing. The art school student romance set in the 90s at the center of the novel was probably a variation of a fantasy I can imagine myself having when I was in high school, which means the book made me nostalgic for a fantasy I used to have that never happened. As other reviewers have noted Odile, the female character, verges into Manic Pixie Dream Girl territory, and her adventures with Jack, the male...more
I hate-finished this book. Have you ever disliked a book and finished it only because you wanted to have a clear and precise explanation of what was wrong with the book? I also finished it because I hoped the ending would salvage the rest of the book.
Summary: It's 1999 and two 20-something slackers make art and love in Chicago. That's it. The plot is so thin it could start a high-fashion modelling career.
The good: The writing can be pretty darn good. The illustrations and photos are unobtrusive...more
Summary: It's 1999 and two 20-something slackers make art and love in Chicago. That's it. The plot is so thin it could start a high-fashion modelling career.
The good: The writing can be pretty darn good. The illustrations and photos are unobtrusive...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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had some problems with this book. but maybe the problems were what kept it from being perfect and therefore imperfect. but i doubt it.
let's just celebrate the wonderful things.
i started jotting down quotes from the book onto post-it notes and sticking them into the book where they were found:
"i want something that makes me look in wonder"
"i like to make things that are weird or small. i like things that don't make a whole lot of sense to anyone but me."
and then i came across this:
"...being in fa...more
let's just celebrate the wonderful things.
i started jotting down quotes from the book onto post-it notes and sticking them into the book where they were found:
"i want something that makes me look in wonder"
"i like to make things that are weird or small. i like things that don't make a whole lot of sense to anyone but me."
and then i came across this:
"...being in fa...more
4 likes · like · see review
You could probably criticize this author for writing shallow characters, or for just inventing the messed-up, Manic Pixie Dream Girl he really wants to date, or call the whole story facile or something, but it was the book version of a movie like Say Anything, where you really enjoy it if you don't think about the whole thing too much.
I loved the idea of Odile the twee art terrorist, and I thought her impulses were right-on, as far as railing against the status quo was concerned. That is all.
I loved the idea of Odile the twee art terrorist, and I thought her impulses were right-on, as far as railing against the status quo was concerned. That is all.
3 likes · like · see review
My girlfriend and I recently drove from San Angelo to Chicago for Christmas, a trip that's around 20 hours one way, and we were going round-trip. Since I never did get that NPR map that tells you what station NPR is when you're driving in unfamiliar parts of the country, we stocked up on books-on-CD; but Office Girl was the only book we got through completely on this trip. And it was a pretty perfect book for this sort of trip.
Office Girl advertises itself as a minor story, a story about two art...more
Office Girl advertises itself as a minor story, a story about two art...more
The few times I read the opening pages of the Hairstyles of the Damned in bookstores, I could never get into. It seemed to cutey, too determinedly hipster. The Great Perhaps I absolutely loved -- an ambitious storyline, with grown-up, fully developed characters. Office Girl feels like a step back, to me. It's very vignette about two quirky twentysomethings working low-level office jobs while they pursue their artists -- the girl's being to start a new art movement that defies all conventions abo...more
Erica was getting a haircut in Lincoln Square, so I did the requisite Gene's Sausage Shop shopping and then wandered into the Book Cellar. Right at the front they had a stack of Joe Meno's latest, Office Girl, with a "Autographed Copy" sticker on them. Well, I thought, even if it sucks, at least I'll have a signed copy, so I bought it and sat down with a cup of coffee. When Erica called to say she was done with her haircut, I was a third of the way through the book. We went home and I read the r...more
Office Girl is a light, easy summer read, perfect for the beach. It's a tale of love and ultimately growing up. Odile is an art school dropout who wants to make everyone happy, in the form of sexual favors and money. Jack is a depressed art school graduate whose wife is leaving him. His main form of happiness is recording the sounds of the city on cassettes which are stacked in boxes all over his house. Both begin work in third shift Muzak phone sales and meet, sensing immediately they are alike
...more
"What do you do with the rest of your life when you realize you don't like anything?" This is one of the questions raised by Odile, one of the main characters of Joe Meno's newest book, Office Girl. Odile is a 20-something art school dropout working in a series of boring office jobs and dreaming of creating something special, of making people take notice. She finds herself falling into inappropriate relationship after inappropriate relationship, all because she's afraid of not being liked. When...more
After disappointments, setbacks and heartaches, Chicago hipsters Odile and Jack embark on a friendship and romance that ends as quick as it begins. Set in the winter of 1999, Joe Meno's Office Girl explores what it means to grow up, find your place, keep your originality and make something of worth (even if others don't see or understand it).
As a fan of Joe Meno, and considering Hairstyles of the Damned to be one of my favorite books of all time, I was excited to read Office Girl and everything...more
As a fan of Joe Meno, and considering Hairstyles of the Damned to be one of my favorite books of all time, I was excited to read Office Girl and everything...more
This is kind of a grudging four-star review, because I kind of didn't want to like this book after I started reading it. I was thinking, "oh great, more twee whimsy about young artists in love." And it was that, a bit, but it was too well-written, with too many interesting things going on for me to hold that against it. I like how both Odile and Jack were given there own short segments before they met, and I particularly liked the series of false "meet-cutes" in Jack's section before he finally...more
It’s almost funny how much I enjoyed this novel, because I tried to avoid it for a long time. I saw the cover photo, girl on bike, and thought, looks like a romance novel – avoid? But, I picked it up on a recommendation and I really liked what Joe Meno accomplished. He broke a lot of rules with his style and story plot. He wrote a novel about two young people, 23, and 25, who have not figured out the world yet and still believe they can make a difference. Odiel has a great voice and an innocent...more
I picked up this book because I wanted something different, maybe something abstract, and the cover drew me in. I am SO GLAD that this book came into my life.
The lives of Jack and Odile, at first separate but then melding together in a quirky love story that's not a love story, tore at my heart strings and made me think in ways I have never thought before. They're desperation towards being noticed, creating excitement, disrupting the norm was so deeply rooted into their beings, or at least who...more
The lives of Jack and Odile, at first separate but then melding together in a quirky love story that's not a love story, tore at my heart strings and made me think in ways I have never thought before. They're desperation towards being noticed, creating excitement, disrupting the norm was so deeply rooted into their beings, or at least who...more
Joe Meno's Office Girl traces the relationship between two would-be hipsters, Odile and Jack. Set in Chicago during the winter of 1999, the novel explores the minor everyday events, epiphanies, and disappointments of these two directionless twenty-somethings.
The first part of the book follows Odile as she grows dissatisfied with the affair she is having with a married man, the menial jobs she drifts to and from, and her own sense of self. Part two shifts to Jack's story--his dissolving marriage,...more
The first part of the book follows Odile as she grows dissatisfied with the affair she is having with a married man, the menial jobs she drifts to and from, and her own sense of self. Part two shifts to Jack's story--his dissolving marriage,...more
Jul 26, 2012
Nick
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
art school students-dropouts-graduates/barristas, hipsters/barristas
First things first, I really admire Joe Meno. The Boy Detective Fails nearly brought me to tears and though some of his other works may not as hit deeply both on a cerebral and visceral level, I respect the hell out of him. He mines the sort of literary territory that often appeals to me (if not cyclically); family, ageing, first love.
But I fear Office Girl came out about ten years too late for me. Some of it hit home the way I like good fiction too, characters and events I can relate to persona...more
But I fear Office Girl came out about ten years too late for me. Some of it hit home the way I like good fiction too, characters and events I can relate to persona...more
I do like a book with a pink cover, it must be said. Joe Meno's Office Girl is a cute read that you can finish in a couple of days, and it follows the meeting of Odile and Jack, both disillusioned art school graduates (or not quite, in Odile's case), when they both end up working night shifts at an office that sells muzac to companies. Odile is reeling from an affair with a married man and Jack has just become a 26-year-old divorcee.
Odile has a notebook full of ideas such as 'dress up as a ghost...more
Odile has a notebook full of ideas such as 'dress up as a ghost...more
Ehhh. After finishing this book yesterday I spent a while trying to figure out why I alternated between liking bits of it and being totally irritated by most of it. I liked the idea that life is really about the small moments we experience or create, but was totally annoyed by the characters. Neither Jack nor Odile was particularly likeable or original. They both seemed to act much too young for their age and neither seemed quite believable - they both felt too much like a sterotypical hipster....more
One line of the description of this book hooked me, "Nothing takes place during a World War." Not that there aren't great books that take place during World Wars, but I have read many of them in my time, and I could use a different setting (as long as it's not also post 9/11 PTSD land). Office Girl, however, was not quite what I was looking for. It tells the story of "artists" Odile and Jack and reads like a literary version of Zooey Deschanel's quirky too-cool projects. As the two work menial o...more
Feb 18, 2013
Ryan Fulgoni
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Fans of Catcher in the Rye, Urban Outfitter Shoppers
Shelves:
contemporary,
hipster
Office Girl is one of those books where I was immediately gripped. This is partially because it's style at first reminded me a lot of Catcher in the Rye, especially the character Odile; however, about 50 pages in, the main character shifts to a man named Jack and never really goes back to Odile. This is one of the very few problems I had with the book. The title and first 50 pages are very misleading. It seems like Joe Meno had a vision to write the book in an ambitious dual perspective, but he...more
Jul 25, 2012
Melissa
added it
I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would. There were many opportunities for this to step into hipster territory where it thinks it's too cool for it's own good. I got the sense reading it that Joe Meno was well aware of this and tread carefully to avoid falling into that trap.
Office Girl is the story of two twenty-somethings, Odile and Jack, working together in a boring office. They bond over their mutual love of art and feeling stuck in a bit of arrested development. Together they...more
Office Girl is the story of two twenty-somethings, Odile and Jack, working together in a boring office. They bond over their mutual love of art and feeling stuck in a bit of arrested development. Together they...more
This is the type of book I would have loved prior to 2002...when I was in high school. As it is, I couldn't get past the halfway point without giving it away.
I'll summarize my thoughts with this excerpt from Alice Gregory's review for the Observer: "It’s impossible to assess where Mr. Meno’s voice ends and his characters’ begins—which wouldn’t be so bad were it not for the epigraphs (Camus, Baudelaire, Debord), acknowledgments ('Koren + Raymond Queneau + Jean-Luc Godard') and appended 'theme mus...more
I'll summarize my thoughts with this excerpt from Alice Gregory's review for the Observer: "It’s impossible to assess where Mr. Meno’s voice ends and his characters’ begins—which wouldn’t be so bad were it not for the epigraphs (Camus, Baudelaire, Debord), acknowledgments ('Koren + Raymond Queneau + Jean-Luc Godard') and appended 'theme mus...more
There are a lot of elements I hate in a book represented in this one. Which, I completely knew going into it, because it's not exactly subtle. But, I also have a bit of a soft spot for Meno, who I met at a bookstore once and was very nice and who - here and in other stuff - writes about feckless twentysomethings in Chicago. And I was once a feckless twentysomething in Chicago, around the same time (or a few years after) this book is set and I hung around with people who were very much like some...more
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
Regular readers know that I am a longtime fan of Chicago contemporary lit legend Joe Meno, one of only a handful of local authors here right now to have broken through into national-scale reputation, media attention and resulting sales; and there have been projects of his in the past that I've really loved...more
Regular readers know that I am a longtime fan of Chicago contemporary lit legend Joe Meno, one of only a handful of local authors here right now to have broken through into national-scale reputation, media attention and resulting sales; and there have been projects of his in the past that I've really loved...more
9 likes · like · see review
Dec 31, 2012
Charity
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
if-i-were-a-romantic,
generationxcellent
This might be more of a Four Star read, but given the connectedness I felt as I read as a GenXer, I find I cannot give anything less than Five. The struggle to find a place where one is happy and creative and not just being a cog in a company. The book made me wistful for the person I once was as I identified with Jack and Odile not only with their struggles but with their youthful abundance of jaded hope. Meno constructs a fast moving and engaging narrative that looks to defy the normative roma...more
Better than I thought it'd be. Much better. Well done, with some mental edits here and there, but overall, it's like a shorter, slightly less refined Franzen. I don't know what that means. I mean, I've read Franzen, and if you have, you might get me, but it's just the witty that grabbed me. It's smart. You fall in and out of love with the characters. You want them to do well. You don't want them to do well. And you turn the page. All 300 of them. Some of the chapters are short. Some are really s...more
A solid "meh" on this one. I love books set in Chicago. The characters were pretty unlikeable for me. Odile (the GIRL in the title) is a 23 year old art school dropout with quirky habits and a desire to create an "art terrorist" movement. In other words, the classic Manic Pixie Dreamgirl. Jack is a 25 year old, recently divorced with the quirky habit of recording things on a tape player.
They meet, have a thing, then part. And that is all. I am too old for this sort of book. It was not what I was...more
They meet, have a thing, then part. And that is all. I am too old for this sort of book. It was not what I was...more
I bought this book at a reading/signing that Joe Meno did. Since I had heard Meno read excerpts from Office Girl right before I started reading it I kept hearing Joe Meno's voice narrating the story as I was reading it. This has never happened to me before, it was an interesting experience.
I liked this book a lot it was a really entertaining read. This book was really relevant to me because there are a lot of parallels between what is happening in my life right now and the characters in the boo...more
I liked this book a lot it was a really entertaining read. This book was really relevant to me because there are a lot of parallels between what is happening in my life right now and the characters in the boo...more
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Joe Meno is a fiction writer and playwright that lives in Chicago. A winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award and the Society of Midland Author's Fiction Prize, he is the author of four novels, The Boy Detective Fails (Akashic 2006), Hairstyles of the Damned (Akashic 2004), Tender as Hellfire (St. Martin's 1999), and How the Hula Girl Sings (HarperCollins 2001). His short story collection is Blu...more
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“Jack: Well, I've never been to New York, but I hear it's for assholes.
Odile: It's not.
Jack: Well, that's what I heard. Cool people don't live there anymore, They all live here. In Chicago.”
—
2 people liked it
Odile: It's not.
Jack: Well, that's what I heard. Cool people don't live there anymore, They all live here. In Chicago.”
“And it's exactly what's wrong with the radio. It's like...anything that tries to appeal to everybody always ends up sounding so cheap.”
—
2 people liked it
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Mar 01, 2013 06:34am