Meeks

the long version

No woman will have Ben without a proper bachelor{u2019}s suit ... and the tailor refuses to make him one. Back from war with a nameless enemy, he{u2019}s just discovered that his mother is dead and that his family home has been reassigned by the state. As if that isn{u2019}t enough, he must now find a wife, or he{u2019}ll be made a civil servant and given a permanent spot in one of the city{u2019}s oppressive factories. Meanwhile, Meeks, a foreigner who lives in the park and imagines he{u2019}s a member of the police, is hunted by the overzealous Brothers of Mercy. Meeks{u2019}s survival depends on his peculiar friendship with a police captain{u2014}but will that be enough to prevent his execution at the annual Independence Day celebration? A dark satire rendered with all the slapstick humor of a Buster Keaton film, Julia Holmes{u2019}s debut novel evokes the strange charm of a Haruki Murakami novel in a dystopic setting reminiscent of Margaret Atwood{u2019}s The Handmaid{u2019}s Tale. Meeks portrays a world at once hilarious and disquieting, in which frustrated revolutionaries and hopeful youths suffer alongside the lost and the condemned, just for a chance at the permanent bliss of marriage and a slice of sugar-frosted Independence Day cake.