Office Girl - Softcover

'Office Girl is a love story on bicycles, capturing the beauty of individual moments and the magic hidden in everyday objects and people.' Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief 'A sweetheart of a novel, complete with a hazy ending.' Kirkus Reviews 'An off-kilter romance doubles as an art movement in Joe Meno's novel. Meno impressively captures post-adolescent female angst and insecurity. Fresh and funny, the images also encapsulate the mortification, confusion and excitement that define so many 20-something existences.' The New York Times Book Review 'Wonderful storytelling panache ... Meno excels at capturing the way that budding love can make two people feel brave and freshly alive to their surroundings' The Wall Street Journal 'It feels as if Meno has written the book he's been wanting to write for years, combining all of those classic elements of his previous work: the stop-and-start of youthful inertia, the painful purity of romance, the way childhood informs us as adults and a direct prose cut into vignettes and montage.' Time Out Chicago 'It might be a standard boy-meets-girl tale, if not for the fact that the boy likes to record the sounds of gloves abandoned in snowdrifts, while the girl has a penchant for filling elevators with silver balloons.' Time Out New York 'Meno has constructed a snowflake-delicate inquiry into alienation and longing ... this wistful, provocative, off-kilter love story affirms the bonds forged by art and story.' Booklist

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 twenty-three-year-old art-school dropout, a minor vandal and a hopeless dreamer. Jack is a twenty-five-year-old shirker who's most happy capturing the endless noises of the city on his out-of-date tape recorder. Together they decide to start their own art movement in defiance of a contemporary culture made dull by both the tedious and the obvious. Set in February 1999 - just before the end of one world and the beginning of another - Office Girl is the story of two people caught between the uncertainty of their futures and the all-too-brief moments of modern life.