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Demons in the Spring

4.03 of 5 stars 4.03 · rating details · 429 ratings · 81 reviews

Demons in the Spring is a collection of twenty short stories by Joe Meno, author of the smash hits The Boy Detective Fails and Hairstyles of the Damned, with illustrations by twenty artists from the fine art, graphic art, and comic book worlds--Todd Baxter, Kelsey Brookes, Ivan Brunetti, Charles Burns, Nick Butcher, Steph Davidson, Evan Hecox, Kim Hiorthoy, Paul Hornscheme...more

Hardcover, 300 pages

Published September 1st 2008 by Akashic Books (first published 2008)

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Oct 13, 2008 Imogen rated it 5 of 5 stars

I know that I just kind of run around goodreads yelling about stuff, but I feel like I need to do a good job with this one. 'Cause it was so good, y'know? But it's very early and I'm sick and only awake because my girlfriend is sicker than me and I want to be able to shut the dog up if the dog starts flipping out and barking. So my girlfriend can keep sleeping.

Yesterday my boss got married. Well, two days ago, but yesterday was the reception, and anyway, two days ago I was too busy being a drun...more I know that I just kind of run around goodreads yelling about stuff, but I feel like I need to do a good job with this one. 'Cause it was so good, y'know? But it's very early and I'm sick and only awake because my girlfriend is sicker than me and I want to be able to shut the dog up if the dog starts flipping out and barking. So my girlfriend can keep sleeping.

Yesterday my boss got married. Well, two days ago, but yesterday was the reception, and anyway, two days ago I was too busy being a drunk rock star mess playing a festival two hours North of here to go to the wedding even if I had been invited. But he is the sort of boss whose wedding reception barbecue I'd have loved to attend! So I took the bus to Tilden Park, which is all I knew of the reception location, and then when I got there, I remembered: Tilden Park has got to take up at least half of Berkeley. It is like the size of Northern California! So I poked around for a minute, then gave up and sat on the bus bench waiting for the bus for an hour, glad I had a book. Even if it was this one.

I'd been trying not to read more than one story a day! Because short stories are like wine. The last book I was into enough to restrain myself like this was Kelly Link's Magic For Beginners. But since I only had the one book and could only make faces for so long at the children of Obama supporters walking by me towards the Berkeley nature, I read maybe the last quarter yesterday.

All of which is a long leadup to me saying: Joe Meno is so good. I think this is my new favorite book of short stories, which is weird, because the Girl in the Flammable Skirt has been kind of my default favorite for something like a decade. (You are no longer ten, Imogen. Maybe it's time to get over having a favorite book, favorite singer, favorite dinner and favorite shirt.) And there are similarities in what Mr Meno's doing here and what Ms Bender was doing there: these stories, mostly, could not literally come true. "There's a little city growing in your heart. They've just had their industrial revolution and, in a couple hours, when they've built skyscrapers and airports, you will die." You can see the lights through her ribcage and skin! And even though she's one of a parade of perfect women who exist in relation to a boy protagonist, you still fall in love with her and with the fact that that is happening.

These are the saddest stories. Well, except maybe for the Boy Detective Fails, but we've established already that that book is the number one saddest book ever, and it's longer, so it can be sadder. In these stories amusement parks crumble, hearts break, dads disappear to the moon no matter how hard you try to keep them here, and there's nothing anybody can do except bravely mope on through it. This is not Fitzgerald's america, or Hunter Thompson's, it's the one I live in, even though y'know not literally.

I've never really been able to get into Dave Eggers- the self-consciousness and self-consciousness that feels like it's trying to be un-selfconsciousness turns me off- except I guess I kind of liked What is the What- but there's something in Demons in the Spring that reminds me of, like, what if Dave Eggers worked for me? This kind of intentional, plain language that takes its time to get where it's going without actually getting ornate or lengthy.

Anyway, yeah. These stories are on the same team as Judy Budnitz and even Kelly Link, in terms of the way that metaphors tend to be literalized (and literalized on bodies), but also are very much coming from the same broke, bleak, dusty place as the way more literally realistic Tender As Hellfire. Every star in the sky.(less)

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Oct 08, 2008 Shawn rated it 3 of 5 stars

not to sound too hokey and dramatic but this book changed my entire perspective on what i may or may not like to read.

first off, i got the audiobook only to discover that the real deal was more of an "event" book with different fonts and illustrations by some of my favorite artists. so i was bitter right away. i LOVE that kind of stuff where the form and function of a book is experimented with and feel it can change the entire experience one has with the stories within.

but about half way throug...more not to sound too hokey and dramatic but this book changed my entire perspective on what i may or may not like to read.

first off, i got the audiobook only to discover that the real deal was more of an "event" book with different fonts and illustrations by some of my favorite artists. so i was bitter right away. i LOVE that kind of stuff where the form and function of a book is experimented with and feel it can change the entire experience one has with the stories within.

but about half way through i decided had i been actually reading this and not listening to it i wasn't sure i would have made it through.

i wasn't so sure about some of the more dream-like, abstract stories and was getting a little fed up with the book as a whole. the more straight up fiction bits were depressing as hell and it didn't seem worth it to trudge through the strange bits to get to something i was more familiar but still uncomfortable with. it's like trying to get out of some weird hippy summer camp where you have to call each other by native american names and give hugs to each other only to discover when you leave you're not going home but to your weirdo grandma's house for the rest of the summer instead of just going to your house. and you're not gonna be watching cartoons and hanging out with your friends, buddy. she ain't got a cable and you're miles from civilization.

so if that makes any sense at all i just stayed at camp and listened on.

a little over halfway through i got to the story, "I want the quiet moments of a party girl." while easily the most heart wrenching of any of these stories it was also the most realistic and made me feel, somehow, like i understood the author's voice a little more clearly now. everything else just kind of clicked. the stories from before i now examined a little deeper and the stories after i listened to with much more attention. it was worth being challenged by these stories as i knew their was honesty in them.

overall, i think the real tie that binds all of these stories together is loss. and while that can be difficult to get through if you stick around until the end you'll see it's not all as hopeless as it originally seems.

i'm going to pick this one up as a hardcover and pour through it again and i would encourage anybody else that wants a challenging read (which i never thought i would) to check it out as well.(less)

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Aug 28, 2008 Jason Jordan rated it 3 of 5 stars

A mixed bag, this one.

While I enjoy the different fonts and illustrations, I prefer the latter to actually pertain to the story at hand. Many do, and are great, but some are too random for my tastes.

Stories I like: "Frances the Ghost," "The Sound before the End of the World," "Animals in the Zoo," "Ghost Plane," "Miniature Elephants Are Popular," "The Unabomber and My Brother," "Art School Is Boring So," "Oceanland," "Get Well, Seymour!," "Airports of Light"

Stories I don't like or don't partic...more

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Jan 18, 2009 Ron rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories

I'm still actually only about halfway through this collection, but so far I've loved every story in it, even though they've all been wildly different from one another. It's like Meno is daring himself to be a new kind of storyteller every time he starts up a new story.

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Mar 09, 2009 Cherie rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I'm going to stop reading him. Joe Meno (in my opinion -- sorry, V) is clever-clever, the kind of writing you encounter in MFA programs. Nothing that is really sustained. Sometimes when you're reading it you might enjoy it, but ultimately, you feel similar to how you feel post-Chinese food - hungry, sick, and bleh.

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Jan 16, 2013 Doug rated it 4 of 5 stars

One of the things that impresses me most about Meno is how adept he is at both naturalistic and magical realist fiction. Two of my favorite stories in this collection, "Miniature Elephants are Popular" and "Airports of Light" explore striking, original, and emotionally resonant metaphors for grief and loss. (I thought the similarly themed "The Architecture of the Moon" was a shade less successful.) "I Want the Quiet Moments of a Party Girl" portrays a young couple struggling to move beyond trage...more

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Apr 19, 2012 Rachael Smyczak rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don't usually read short stories but I am always willing to make an exception for one of my favorite authors. With Demons in the Spring, I never regretted making that exception.

Meno has a way with words. His novels are always heartbreaking and difficult and this set of short stories follows suite. The stories are odd. There is one about a woman who becomes a cloud whenever her husband kisses her. There is one about a girl who has a tumor that progresses the same way a city would until there is...more

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Mar 03, 2011 Zach rated it 4 of 5 stars

Meno bounces between absurdity and tenderness with the nimbleness of a featherweight boxer. Most of these stories are excellent, a few exceptional, and there are only one or two that I didn't enjoy. Meno has created the perfect voice for alternating between playfulness and sincerity. The prose usually hangs somewhere on the edge, ready to topple down either way, often splitting itself to the point where the reader doesn't know whether to be amused or heartbroken. Like my favorite writers, Meno t...more

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Sep 09, 2008 Nick rated it 3 of 5 stars

A little bit of a let down, considering how excited I was about it's release. This book ebbed and flowed for me: some of the stories were tops, some of Meno's finest short work, and some just weren't all that great.

Highlights included: Frances the Ghost, It Is Romance, What A Schoolgirl You Are, Miniature Elephants Are Popular, The Architecture of The Moon, The Unabomber and My Brother, Art School Is Boring So, Oceanland, and Airports of Light.

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Jan 20, 2009 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars

i really, really liked this book. these are really great short stories. the only reason that this is not a 5 star rating is that i get really caught up by the definition, "it was amazing." few books are truly amazing and should stick with you for years to merit a rating that high. i don't really know if these stories will stick with me for years. probably not, though they're fresh, original, and, lacking a better way to say this, fully developed. each story is its own distinct and wonderful worl...more

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Nov 18, 2011 Brittany Kubes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Delightful short stories. It’s always the case that I’m irritated to pick up a book of short stories, but am then consistently pleasantly surprised. It’s hard to start books – like meeting a potential new friend, you need to get to know one another and grow into attachment. Due to the obvious length of a short story, I always feel like it’ll be akin to becoming friends after bumping into each other on the street (i.e. impossible to love in allotted time)... Despite that, it was a very good colle...more Delightful short stories. It’s always the case that I’m irritated to pick up a book of short stories, but am then consistently pleasantly surprised. It’s hard to start books – like meeting a potential new friend, you need to get to know one another and grow into attachment. Due to the obvious length of a short story, I always feel like it’ll be akin to becoming friends after bumping into each other on the street (i.e. impossible to love in allotted time)... Despite that, it was a very good collection by Meno. The illustrations were a nice touch, but I barely noticed them and would have felt the same with or without them. Meno does a touching job capturing the inane issues of everyday peoples – one of my favorite topics. The most notable stories:

Is It Romance: WOWed by this story. I couldn’t help but think of the movie Happiness (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0147612/) while reading this, which captured similar abnormalities among commoners – a ‘behind the scenes,’ if you will. I was mentally checking out of this story at the initial storyline of a teacher and little kids getting amped about Model UN…BUT the story crawled under my skin with each paragraph. It turns out the teacher, Mr. Albee, is depressed and gay, and the animated youngsters debating about foreign relations is the only thing he has going on in his life. He is in love with them. We see him go home from the Model UN meetings and call gay sex lines & cry out of loneliness. He soon decides to take the Model UN group to the southside of Chicago so they can all be killed together. I suppose this is so he can preserve his love for the kids (is it romance? or appreciation? please be appreciative love, we hope) because it is so fleeting. He chickens out. At another point, “knowing his life will never be more full than it is at this moment” Mr. Albee wishes for “a brain aneurism to end it all right then and there.”
Alas, the Model UN group later competes at a conference out of town, which requires a hotel room for Mr. Albee and the kids. Mr. Albee books one hotel room and feigns mistake. Oh no, is it romantic love?! The night begins as an innocent slumber party, cutesy secrets being shared, until Mr. Albee is asked for a secret. He accordingly shuts the lights off, tells the kids to pretend they’re on a deserted island, “who would you hold…what would we do?” Silence. Someone says, “I want to turn the lights back on,” and when they do, Mr. Albee is crying and trying to jump out the window. Turns out, it wasn’t about romance but about isolation. I loved every minute of it.

What a Schoolgirl You Are: Jam-packed with braces-picking, popular cheerleader suicide, and a Choose Your Own Adventure-tinged style. It was fun.

Miniature Elephants Are Popular: The best illustrations were contained in this short story. Mini elephants are the new ‘it’ pet. Mr. Larchmont buys a mini; he takes it on walks every day and calls it “dear friend”.

Iceland Theory: An encyclopedic account of Iceland – huh? Snore. Well, except for the last couple of sentences, for which the entire piece seems to have been written: “Why do these Icelanders love their imperfect little country when it has so often been the source of unending misery?...Why be forced to contemplate the terror of being buried alive by an earthquake that will certainly destroy everything you hold dear before long? Why love anything?” …Meno could have cut out the first 10 pages and I would have nonetheless received the same message.

The depressive ordinariness of the stories was a joy. I’d be interested to read more Meno.(less)

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Nov 25, 2008 Johnsergeant rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook, audiblecom, short-stories

Narrated by Victor Bevine

8 hrs and 18 mins

PUBLISHER Audible, Inc.

AUDIBLE RELEASE DATE 07-29-08

Publisher's Summary
This is an Audible IndieFirst selection.

Demons in the Spring is a collection of 20 short stories by Joe Meno, author of the smash hits The Boy Detective Fails and Hairstyles of the Damned.

In these stories, oddly modern moments occur in the most familiar of public places, from offices to airports to schools to zoos to emergency rooms: a young girl refuses to go anywhere unless she's dr...more

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Mar 06, 2009 Venessa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes you can judge a book from its cover....from its concept....from its design. Yet none of that works without the writing, and as always, Meno's writing is brilliant in this collection of short stories. (Although I couldn't really get into "Iceland Today," which I just thought was....well I don't know what I thought of the fictional Country Profile of Iceland.)

Quirky characters populate this collection, endearing in their melancholic worlds. Loss is a theme that dominates many of the stor...more

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Mar 04, 2010 Christine rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: countdown-city-book-club

Outside of handful of meaningful and good stories: "An Apple Could Make You Laugh," "Miniature Elephants are Popular," I Want the Quiet Moments of a Party Girl," and "The Unabomber and my Brother," I found this collection by Joe Meno gimmicky and unsatisfying.

I really wanted to like this book, because of the physical beauty of the book and because my dear friend Miranda picked it for our book club, but a significant amount of the stories felt superficial to me. The characters often lacked devel...more

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Sep 11, 2011 Daryl rated it 2 of 5 stars

I have sort of a thing about fiction author Joe Meno. Years and years ago, a friend gave me his short story collection Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir, and I loved it (and much later, after a reread, reviewed it here). On the basis of my liking that book, I more recently read his novel The Great Perhaps, which I liked much less (reviewed here). Meno for me is much like Richard Powers, in that I think there's a lot of potential there but he fails to live up to it, so far, more than he lives...more

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Aug 25, 2012 Steph rated it 4 of 5 stars

It has been awhile (high school) since I've read anything written by Joe Meno. The short stories in Demons are just as inventive, charming, and quirky as I remembered his writing to be. Each story was modern but surreal, and I found myself wishing many of them wouldn't end. My favorite shorts included "Frances the Ghost," "What A Schoolgirl You Are," and most of all, "Miniature Elephants Are Popular." The illustrations and typography by different artists that were provided for each story also ad...more

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Sep 02, 2009 Michael Hartford rated it 4 of 5 stars

Joe Meno's Demons in the Spring is filled with wonders: a woman with a city growing inside her chest, an aquarium in decline, a world plunged into darkness by an absent moon, palaces made of ice. There's a touch of the absurd, and the surreal, with a melancholy haze over many of the stories, but the overall tone is of playfulness and amazement. It is informed by the logic of dreams, even in the more realistic stories; surrender to the dreams, and you'll be swept into a world spinning just a litt...more

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May 05, 2013 Nik Markevicius rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: stopped-reading

I'm probably not going back to this one. These short stories are the kind which seem like they should go further, tell more, and have a lot more plot, and yet this consistently doesn't happen. If you're one of those who say shorties don't have to go anywhere or do more than exist, you're probably giving me the finger right now, but if you like your literary fiction to tell a story, I'd encourage you to look at Meno's "Hairstyles of the Damned" rather than this collection.

On the other hand, the...more

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Nov 18, 2008 Anina Ertel rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels, adult-fiction

Eh. I enjoyed the pictures a lot more than the stories.

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Mar 04, 2010 Miranda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: our-fabulous-untitled-book-club

These collections of stories were hit or miss but I felt towards the end I enjoyed most of the short stories I had read. Even within the stories I didn't like so much, I liked the relationship between characters. An example is "The Sound Before the End of the World". It lagged a bit but despite the distance between the father and his children, & his wife, there was something there. I was impressed that Meno could convey that.

I was also impressed by his vast imagination. He created a made-up...more

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Mar 19, 2009 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

Joe Meno has a real knack for creating fantastical situations that could never occur in reality and making them seem completely plausible. And the normal, everyday aspects of these stories such as not liking your roommate because they always have noisy sex while you sit in your bedroom alone wearing a space helmet contemplating a celebrity poop fanzine are so charming, I never felt depressed reading them.

My favorite moment though had to be the dad threatening his daughter's would be suitor by sh...more

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Sep 22, 2011 Dan Phillips rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

I enjoyed Meno's novel, Hairstyles of the Damned, so I thought I would give his short stories a try. I was not disappinted. A fair number of the pieces incorporate what I guess you'd call "magical realism" (though I'm not sure I have that right -- it's been a while since I was in college.) Stuff like people turning into clouds, and miniature cities growing inside peoples' chests. In the best cases, these twists in reality create a surprisingly touching effect, especially in the story "The Archit...more

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Dec 08, 2010 Jason Pettus rated it 4 of 5 stars

(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.)

Earlier this year I was asked by our pals at Akashic Books to contribute a review of a single short story as a promotional project for Joe Meno's 2008 collection Demons in the Spring, recently reissued in paperback form as a fundraiser for the very worthy 826CHICAGO. And that garnered me a review copy of t...more

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Sep 15, 2008 Mickey rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Leaders and founders, women and children

Recommended to Mickey by: Joe Meno

Throughout history, mankind has had the ever-recurring dream of creating perfection. Nearly 100,000 authors were bitter failures, and may seem to us today extremely naive. For today, perfection is back on the book shelf.

Joe Meno, a fascinating layman, puts dreams into dining rooms and work areas. One of America's most stimulating children, he dances in the fields of writing, mulling over life and rearranging communities' attitudes toward sex and religion. This book is more popular than the abo...more

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Dec 03, 2008 Pamela rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of Steven Milhauser

A collection of magic realist short stories from Joe Meno, all of which are characterized by a sense of exoticism, isolation, melancholy, and beauty. Although the stories range in subject, they all show what happens when longing can't be expressed in a "normal" way, due to the contemporary zeitgeist of disconnect and escapist fantasy. Like the titular elephants in "Miniature Elephants are Popular," Meno's characters have hearts that are so sensitive to pain that they are in constant danger of be...more

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Dec 05, 2008 oriana rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: phenomenal, read-2008

Oh really, I don't know what to say. This book is magnificent, just magnificent, and this close to unbearably sad, most of it. The stories are incredible, incredibly moving. The book itself is as gorgeous as the stories. The illustrations (minus one or two artists) are beautiful, and beautifully compliment the stories. The thick pages and fuzzy cover and big type and pretty pictures... it all combines to really force you to savor every aching minute of each shockingly great story. And I don't ev...more

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Aug 27, 2008 Marie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobooks

I think it was a mistake to get this book in audio format, but Audible.com enticed me with their "indie first" promotion so I took a chance on this one. I think short stories aren't suited to the audio format the way novels often are; the "one voice for every story" thing wasn't doing it for me for this book. Also, from how this book is described on Amazon, the print edition is illustrated, so I'm sure I missed out there.

So, about the stories: I liked quite a few of them. When this guy's good, h...more

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Aug 07, 2010 Vaughan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really liked this story collection quite a bit; I even broke one of my cardinal rules: reading back-to-back books by the same author. The stories vary in quality, but most are at least good, and some, "Frances the Ghost," "Stockholm 1973", "THe Unabomber and My Brother," and esp. "I Want the Quiet Moments of a Party Girl," are much more than merely good.

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Mar 16, 2010 Cait rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, read-in-2010, favorites, owned

I can no longer say "I'm not really a fan of short stories but..." I've just read too many great stories lately for that statement to apply.

I absolutely loved this book. My favorite stories were The Unabomber and My Brother and Art School is Boring So, but honestly most of them were fantastic.

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Sep 26, 2012 Heather added it

Loved this book! Read it going to/from Denver and barely even registered where I was thanks to these short, but vivid stories with sometimes hilarious illustrations. Wish I could find it in paperback to give as a gift, but it seems to be going out of print.

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About Joe Meno

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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“The city glitters past us with its sharp edges, reminding us of how tiny, how weak, how totally unimportant we are.” — 20 people liked it

“Being decent is the only thing that matters in a terrible world like this.” — 7 people liked it

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