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katrinky 's review for:
Why We Broke Up
by Daniel Handler
Yep. Five stars. Said it and I meant it. I love Handler's writing, which I had (really embarrassingly) never read before, and I loved Kalman's art, and I loved how perfectly the two went together. I saw this pair in town a few weeks ago, and they had an HILARIOUS report going the entire night. Having that in mind made how sad and gorgeous this story a stark contrast. Stark, but not jarring, because the reader is swept into the world of Min Green and Ed Slaterton so quickly that everything else fades away. Your plans for the weekend, the barriers you've built protecting you from remembering YOUR worst breakup, or the ENTIRE STRETCH of your teenage years... it will all leave you, and you will read for hours about every item in the box that clever, funny, heartbroken Min dumps on the doorstep of confused, athletic, doofus Ed. The pictures are of the contents, the book is in the form of the letter explaining each one Min leaves along with the box. This is the BEST kind of book for my brain: Pictures, short-ish chapters, building a story out of vignettes. And Handler is better about funny, colloquial dialogue and fevered break-up writing from inside the mind of an incredibly creative, loving teenage girl than anyone I've read except maybe Laurie Anderson. Read this and be reminded of the best and worst about being young and in love.