What an astonishingly beautiful, awful, brutal, stunning book. Who are the players? Well, there's eleven-year-old Dough and his thirteen-year-old pyro brother Pill-Bug. (Their dad, who's dead, was familiar with Johnny Cash's "Boy Named Sue" theory.) They live in a trailer park with their mom and her new boyfriend and a three-legged, one-eyed pitbull they rescued from a dog-fight. The boys are furious white-trash fuckups—but the book is all told by Dough, who is devastated and miserable by his own powerless rage. What's the plot? Well, it proceeds episodically, with tales of simple things like buying cigarettes and failing tests at school, to much more harrowing sections about rape and child abuse and an alcoholic deputy and a terrifying taxidermist, plus there's a haunted barn and Dough's recurring waking dreams about the Devil and his dark semi-obsession with his own doom.What's the overall effect? It is so intense.This was Meno's first book, apparently, written when he was in his early twenties. It's unbelievable that Hairstyles of the Damned, which is much more simple, less ambitious and less accomplished, is the one that made him famous. And it's even more unbelievable that this harrowing, heartbreaking, furious thing came from the same person who is now writing twee sweet hipster fables like Boy Detective and Demons in the Spring. I guess he had to exorcise his demons here to get to the precious manic-pixie bicycle girl in Office Girl? Because this book is red-hot with fucking demons, and I don't think I'm going to sleep very well tonight.
Maybe if I could have read this when it came out, I'd be more impressed, but the whole thing feels super played out to me. Tender As Hellfire is the story of 10-year-old (turned 11-yrs) Dough and his 13-year-old brother Pill-bug. They're recently "white trash" after a move to a trailer park, the family following the mother's boyfriend there. Everything is so over-the-top that I don't believe a damn word of it. The gimmicks and tricks are so obvious. Trying to make the narrator sound young by starting sentences with "I guess", when it doesn't make sense to say it. Trying to make the kids seem "harder than their ages" by having them smoking cigarettes, looking at "nudie mags" (like any 10-yr-old kid would call them that), and talking about having sex (in the crudest terms). AND the brother's supposed to seem very tough and stone-hearted because he sets fires to the property of people who cross him. Super cliched. AND the narrator, Dough, is supposed to be 13 at the time of his having written the novel, having told his story. And the language is not at all what any 13-year-old kid would use. There's too much aesthetic distance that comes through the voice. I could probably buy these events happening to a 10- or 11-year old who has an older, thuggy brother and is from a poor neighborhood he's ashamed of. The awkwardness, the embarrassment, the perpetual anger! I can buy it! Just claim your narrator is 17+. No one who's 13 talks this way.
What do You think about Tender As Hellfire (2007)?
we-ell (always a good way to start a review)...avoiding the easy Salinger comparisons that inevitably arise whenever anyone writes something that isn't terrible featuring a protaganist under the age of eighteen or so, even if the comparison doesn't really fit, the book does capture a bit of that queer confusion surrounding being eleven or twelve. At the same time, the narrator's just a little too precocious for the book to ring true, and the various plotlines never really weave together into a cohesive, believable unit. This isn't to say the book's terrible, or even really bad, by any means. It's a breeze to read and Meno can turn a phrase that makes reading even a disjointed, unbelievable story a pleasure - but turns of phrase a fine piece of fiction do not make.ps - i'm not going to review it because i read it several years ago, but another of Meno's books, hairstyles of the damned is as fine a book on adolescence as you'll ever read - and it doesn't even stoop to using an unreliable narrator.
—brain
Oh god, what a piece of crap. I love Joe Meno's Demons in the Spring. It's one of my favorites, but everything about this book is sub-par. The writing is repetitive, redundant, and generalized. He's way too adjective happy, which in itself is not a big deal, but he's short on details. The voice does not ring as authentic for the character's age, place, and experience, and the rules governing what the narrator does and does not know seem to shift. The overall story feels slapped together and I was indifferent well before the ending came. You want to read a story of American grit? Try Last Exit to Brooklyn by Selby. You want a coming of age story of a roughneck boy? Try This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff. And please, read anything else by Joe Meno, cause he's great, but this is not.
—Kevin
Joe Meno is an amazing author. You can tell a lot about how good an author is by reading his or her first book and Tender As Hellfire has all the elements of a well written story that will keep you intrigued from start to finish. Dough is the narrator. You see the events unfold through his eyes and the quirky way he has of describing things is really great, so great in fact, that you feel as if you're right there beside him experiencing the same stuff. I also liked Pill, Dough's brother. You can tell that the two of them really care for each other in the way that they look out for one another, especially when the shit starts to hit the fan.Lottie is Dough's friend and they have a lot more in common than either one would like to admit and even though Dough is glad when she gets out of her father's house, he also misses her and wishes he could be with her where ever she is.All in all, I throughly enjoyed this book and I can't wait to read more from Joe Meno.
—Kate
