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Looking
at the cover of Joe Meno's Bluebirds Used to Croon in the
Choir, one would think that the book is filled with happy-go-lucky
tales of pretty girls befriending singing bluebirds and stories
of young people in love. After all, as Meno writes in the
dedication, this collection of stories was intended to "woo"
his now wife, Koren, so it's sure to be full of romance and
happy endings.
Not so
much. This is, after all, Joe Meno.
The
book opens with "The Use of Medicine," in which two little
girls find an old medical bag with a vial of sedatives and
a syringe that they use to knock out small animals they find
so that they can dress them up in cute little outfits more
easily.
Then
there's "Happiness Will Be Yours," in which two men carry
on the tradition of meeting once a year at a local amusement
park, a ritual they vowed to carry out as children while waiting
to die at the hands of a kidnapper. And then there's "Mr.
Song," in which a would-be womanizer pays the washed-up title
character to sing "spontaneously" through the walls to set
the scene for his seductions.
These
stories are so strange and—on occasion—macabre that
one might wonder how this book was meant to "woo" at all.
But there is also something seductive about these stories.
Each one is a pearl: something beautiful that develops around
something harsh. The traumatic kidnapping in "Happiness Will
Be Yours," for example, becomes the harsh center around which
the two men have built their lives. It's an intriguing balance
between cruelty and redemption that keeps the reader engaged.
Though
Meno is dealing with some heady topics, each story is crafted
with careful prose that develops each potentially harsh situation
into something beautiful, if melancholy. A few of the narratives
fall a bit short, but, overall, it's a stunning collection
that will appeal to any fan of the short story form.
(November,
2007)
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