Bluebirds Used to Croon the Choir: Stories is a jazzy collection of short stories and little moments from genre-hopping Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 author Joe Meno

Joe Meno

Joe Meno is a novelist, writer of short fiction, playwright, and music journalist based in Chicago.-Biography:After attending Columbia College Chicago, Meno spent time working as a flower delivery truck driver and art therapy teacher at a juvenile detention center...

. Released by Planet Punk

Planet Punk

Planet Punk is an album released by Die Ärzte on 18 September 1995. According to the band's autobiography, Die Ärzte guitarist Farin Urlaub considers Planet Punk to be their best album.-Track listing:-Personnel:*Farin Urlaub - guitar, vocals...

books in 2005.

Plot summary

Meno ensures from the first that readers are in odd territory, starting off with "The Use of Medicine," about a pair of kids using an old bottle of belladonna and a hypodermic they find among their father's medical supplies to drug little animals. Surreality rears its head in "In the Arms of Someone You Love," set in revolutionary Cuba, where a man worries about losing his wife to a dashing magician. The city erupts in violence, and the man makes a devilish barter for the sake of love, a move that takes this tale out of the realm of magical realism and into that of high romantic fantasy. More mundane matters prevail in such stories as "Mr. Song," which portrays a cad who pays the aged crooner in the apartment next door to sing ballads through the thin walls as a way of setting the mood, and "I'll Be Your Sailor," in which a schlemiel carries on a benighted affair with a woman in his apartment building who works at a themed fast-food restaurant and has a hockey-loving brute for an uncaring husband. The collection's highlight is the hilarious "A Trip to Greek Mythology Camp," a painfully comic scenario about a summer camp full of socially awkward kids who assume that in numbers they will find acceptance. Musical tales of love and loss with hardly a word wasted.

External links

• Amazon.com : Synonsis and reviews about 'Bluebirds Used to Croon the Choir: Stories'.