Author: Daniel Handler
Dates read: April 12, 2010 - April 20, 2010 (9 days)
Pages: 272
I picked up this book expecting it to be another short read to help put me back on schedule, though I turned out to be wrong in my estimate as to how long it would take me to get through it. I saw this book on the sale rack at Skylight and was intrigued by the praise on the back cover from other impressive authors, so I figured it was worth $4 to give it a go.
While this book is categorized as a novel, it actually is more like a series of vignettes, some of which are related and some of which appear to be related but turn out not to be. That’s about all I can say about it in terms of what it’s about.
The reason I have so little to say on the subject of what this book is about is the fact that I found it extremely confusing. Going into it with the understanding that it’s a novel made me draw connections between vignettes that I read as chapters in an overarching narrative, but much later in the book I discovered that some of the characters I’d interpreted as one person at different times in his/her life turned out to actually be different people that happened to have the same first name (last names are rarely given). Characters sometimes discuss events that are constant throughout, but even those that are definitely somehow related to characters in other vignettes provide very little sense of correlation or continuity. Phrases are often repeated over and over by a character, many characters order or discuss mixed drinks with ridiculously loaded names, and characters often use words with more than one colloquial meaning which they point out when they’re misunderstood by whomever they’re speaking to. Other than that, I suppose relationships are a constant theme, though what exactly I’m supposed to conclude about them, I have no idea. Every chapter is named with an adverb, and at page 187 “Truly” seems to be an essay on the nature of coincidence inserted in the book to explain some things and give the reader a shot at figuring out what the hell is going on, but coming upon that just made me frustrated at the amount of time I’d already sunk into this mislabeled collection of vignettes. I wish I could say that by the end I’d managed to take something from it, but honestly the only reaction I had upon finishing it was relief that I was finally done with it.
