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thetamari 's review for:
Why We Broke Up
by Daniel Handler
This is a review from a biased, huge fan of Daniel Handler. But whatever, it gets 5 stars because I connected with the story, as many people can, of the universal pain of your first break-up. Oh, fuck that shit. I mean, not only are you are your most emotionally imbalanced, with the reasoning part of your brain not even developed, but you have deal with this bullshit. Daniel Handler knows this bullshit well. Another reason for the five-star review is the brilliant dialogue between such realistic characters. Examples of my favourites being:
""It's kind of personal."
He turned off the water and watched me in the doorway with the towel on his shoulder. "OK."
"I mean, not like my period or my parents beating me, but personal."
"Yeah, it's rough when your parents beat you and you have your period.""
and one character, on sampling coffee for the first time:
"This is like a cookie, it tastes like a cookie having sex with a doughnut."
I can see why some readers find the narrator, Min, off-putting. Generally they find her too pretentious. From what I know, Handler has written her this way because of the influence of his favourite author, Nabokov - his narrators are deliberately misleading or not fully self-aware. Which makes even more sense when you remember Min's in high school. If people want to be completely in love with the characters in the books they read and convinced they have no flaws, they can easily read something else. But this is realistic, and funny too, so to me, you'd be completely missing the point.
Another point on the character of Min - for those readers familiar with Handler's 'The Basic Eight,' the narrators of both works are so similar they could be the same character. Which is not something I minded so much, because I enjoy Handler's characterisation so much. But it's a wee issue.
The narration also slips into what is at times confusing, sort-of stream of consciousness, eh I don't know maybe I'm doing it now - anyway sometimes the way Min thinks disrupts the flow of the writing and you have to go back and re-read what she said to follow what's going on. Again, this is perhaps idiosyncratic and an example of the dodgy narrator thing Handler's so into.
But overall, I'm into this book, and I don't want to break up with it or give it back, so I love it forever.
""It's kind of personal."
He turned off the water and watched me in the doorway with the towel on his shoulder. "OK."
"I mean, not like my period or my parents beating me, but personal."
"Yeah, it's rough when your parents beat you and you have your period.""
and one character, on sampling coffee for the first time:
"This is like a cookie, it tastes like a cookie having sex with a doughnut."
I can see why some readers find the narrator, Min, off-putting. Generally they find her too pretentious. From what I know, Handler has written her this way because of the influence of his favourite author, Nabokov - his narrators are deliberately misleading or not fully self-aware. Which makes even more sense when you remember Min's in high school. If people want to be completely in love with the characters in the books they read and convinced they have no flaws, they can easily read something else. But this is realistic, and funny too, so to me, you'd be completely missing the point.
Another point on the character of Min - for those readers familiar with Handler's 'The Basic Eight,' the narrators of both works are so similar they could be the same character. Which is not something I minded so much, because I enjoy Handler's characterisation so much. But it's a wee issue.
The narration also slips into what is at times confusing, sort-of stream of consciousness, eh I don't know maybe I'm doing it now - anyway sometimes the way Min thinks disrupts the flow of the writing and you have to go back and re-read what she said to follow what's going on. Again, this is perhaps idiosyncratic and an example of the dodgy narrator thing Handler's so into.
But overall, I'm into this book, and I don't want to break up with it or give it back, so I love it forever.