by Julia Holmes
No woman will have Ben without a proper bachelor's suit . . . and the tailor refuses to make him one. Back from war with a nameless enemy, Ben finds that his mother is dead and his family home has been reassigned by the state. As if that isn t enough, he must now find a wife, or he ll be made a civil servant and given a permanent spot in one of the city s oppressive factories. Meanwhile, Meeks, a foreigner who lives in the park and imagines he s a member of the police, is hunted by the overzealous Brothers of Mercy. Meeks survival depends on his peculiar friendship with a police captain-but will that be enough to prevent his execution at the annual Independence Day celebration? A dark satire rendered with the slapstick humor of a Buster Keaton film, Julia Holmes debut marries the existentialism of Fyodor Dostoevsky s Notes from Underground to the strange charm of a Haruki Murakami novel. 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.
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