The Great Perhaps is structured around a deceptively simple quest. Scientist Jonathan Casper wants to understand why our world is so complex and somehow make it less so. To do this, he’s searching for a prehistoric squid at the ocean’s floor that may hold the key to unlocking evolution. Quirky characters with offbeat missions abound in Joe Meno’s touching, yet often hilarious, fifth novel. There’s Jonathan’s wife, Madeline, an animal behaviorist whose male pigeons rape and murder the females. Equal time is spent on Casper’s outcast teenage daughters. Ameila plans to overthrow capitalism with her beret and Mac-made propaganda films, while tender Thisbe searches for God as she’s drawn into a relationship with consequences she doesn’t comprehend. A rich cast of characters and an intriguing plot that cackles with a contemplative wonder even at its darkest, The Great Perhaps is Joe Meno’s love letter to the everyday miracles that make life worth living.

The major connection between the members of the Casper family is that they are all, and in many cases self-admittedly, cowards. Even the grandfather, a fighter jet designer resigned to a retirement home, has been so beaten down by the trials and tribulations of everyday life that he’s restricted himself to speakingjust ten words a day, then nine, then eight, and so on. It is Jonathan’s fear that is rendered most acute. “[He] was forty-eight years old and afraid of almost everything.” Born with a condition that causes a seizure whenever he spots a cloud, Jonathan spends much of his life in the safety of his laboratory, retreating from the human clutter present all around him. This all plays into the 2004 Election which acts as backdrop for the novel, and Meno wisely amps up the politics of fear without ever becoming preachy or redundant in the post-George W. era. The American population’s decision to choose uncomplicated rhetoric in complicated times is reflected in these characters’ everyday struggles. As expressed through Jonathan’s paranoid interior monologue: “Why is there no junk food anywhere in the house… Why not some hot dogs or a frozen pizza? Where the fuck is Madeline? It’s eight o’clock on a Sunday night. What is happening to them? Does she still love him? Is she getting fucked by some dude with enormous biceps right now? Why can’t they just be unhappy together? Why can’t they just live like regular miserable people?”

Much of the novel’s success comes from Meno’s ability to juggle the middle-aged malaise of Jonathan and Madeline with the heartbreaking earnestness of Ameila and Thisbe. Meno has an ear for teenage dialogue and has crafted characters that are at once endearing and awkward. And although the awkward teen archetype might be a bit overwrought for some, Meno only allots the teen characters a fourth of the page space so things never become grating. Early in the novel, Ameila explains to her friends that “white men have like ruined everything on the planet. They’re responsible for everything bad that’s ever happened. Like pollution and genocide, everything that’s wrong in Africa. White men are totally the problem.” The way she redirects her self-loathing at everything she encounters rings absolutely true, as does Thisbe’s desire for simplistic religious solutions in the face of a world gone mad. Both daughters’ plot threads reflect off one another—they’re both involved in sexual exploits with devastating results—and both threads dovetail quite nicely in the book’s final pages.

If Meno makes any missteps, it’s spending too much time mucking about in the annals of history. He wastes three chapters on random members of the Casper clan from eras past. Also, Meno takes a great deal of time depicting the grandfather’s back story, chronicling his German roots in Chicago, his stay in an American internment camp, and eventually the fallout from the Vietnam War. These sections break the flow of the novel and pale in comparison to the contemporary scenes. In the present day sections, Meno only disappoints when he pushes Ameila into a contrived plot about blowing up her high school, a daring act that doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the book regardless of its outcome.

Joe Meno’s fifth novel, The Great Perhaps, is successful not only because of its memorable characters, but also because it risks melodrama and sentimentality and celebrates the messy complexity of human life. Meno’s scope is vast, and although his ambition may occasionally outreach his ability to pace a novel, his work here is somber and funny, terrifying yet exhilarating. Toward the end of The Great Perhaps, Jonathan Casper comes to a realization that strives to sum up the entire book. “It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful because it’s complicated.”