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| 'The
wisest, most humane and transcendent novel on the contemporary family since The
Corrections' Irvine Welsh
Meet the Caspers, a family beset by cowardice and
anxiety. Jonathan is a palaeontologist, searching in vain for a prehistoric squid.
His wife, Madeline, an animal behaviourist, cannot explain why the pigeons she
is studying are becoming increasingly aggressive. Their older daughter Amelia
is a disappointed teenage revolutionary, while their younger, Thisbe, has become
a devout Christian. Meanwhile, the girls' grandfather, Henry, is slowly absenting
himself from life: each day he gives away a possession and speaks one word fewer,
until the time comes when he will have spoken his last ever word. Before that
can happen, however, Jonathan and Madeline decide to separate - and, suddenly,
each family member has to confront their fears about the world in which they live.
Set in the run-up to the 2004 US presidential election, THE GREAT PERHAPS is a
tale of the nuclear family in the nuclear age; a witty, revealing story about
just how complicated and ambiguous modern life can be. 'Darkly funny, lyrical
and shrewdly observant' Tom Perrotta
'A big, generous-hearted American family
novel . . . Meno's characters bristle with humanity, and I think this book will
find a huge audience for its wisdom and life-affirming, but unsentimental, qualities'
Irvine Welsh, Daily Telegraph 
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