Tender as Hellfire : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: It stinks
Review: I read 3 pages of this and gave it to my upstairs neighbor, a guy who hoards cast-off novels from bargain stores and piles them on his floor to give the illusion of being a wise hermit (he's actually a packrat without a job). Even he didn't like "Tender as Hellfire." It reads like any other college boy's attempt to be "literary" using forced slang and run-on sentences---kind of like Bret Easton Ellis, but dumber. Avoid at all costs (assuming you could even find it).

Rating:
Summary: Working Class fiction?
Review: Joe Meno always talks of his "blue collar" roots because his dad was a steel worker. Columbia professors are not really "blue collar" eh Joe??? A mockery of literature from a small mind who just happened to know people, right Joe???

This guy is a hack, skip it at all costs...

Rating:
Summary: This first attempt never quite gets off the ground.
Review: Meno's book entices you with savory characters and gritty prose, but suffers badly from a recurring point of view problem. As you read, you have the sense that with the start of each chapter, the narrator forgets everything he's previously told his audience. The magical connection writers create with their reader is dangled in front of us in one chapter and then snatched away in the next by this out of touch narrator. A sharp editor's pen could have reduced the redundancy of overdone description, and helped this first time novelist move through a narrative that mattered to the reader. A collection of short stories may have been a wiser choice for St. Martin's.