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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Get your adverbs here, May 2, 2006
I didn't know about the connection between author Daniel Handler and his pseudonym Lemony Snicket until after I finished Adverbs, but I think I sensed a kinship between the two. Both are told with a certain deadpan humor, both wrestle the maximum meaning out of words and phrases, both stop just a hair short of becoming pedantic in their explanations.
Unfortunately, after a certain point, I think the unusual combination of characteristics under both names succeeds ... but at the expense of the narrative.
The biggest difference, of course, is that Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events is written for children (or, perhaps more accurately, at the parents who buy them for their children), while Adverbs is aimed at adults. And while the former explores some of the central themes of childhood -- fear of abandonment, need for approval, adventure, that sort of thing -- Adverbs focuses squarely on the main theme of adulthood: love.
The book is made up of 16 intersecting stories that, with witty pen and stiff upper lip, explore the frail state of love. The title of the 250-page volume comes from the fact that each chapter is named for the adverb that modifies the word love as it is described in that chapter.
I thought the first chapter -- entitled "Immediately" -- was the best, telling us about a couple on their way to hear a will read. Here's how it starts:
"Love was in the air, so both of us walked through love on our way to the corner. We breathed it in, particularly me: the air was also full of smells and birds, but it was love, I was sure, that was tumbling down to my lungs, the heart's neighbors and confidants. Andrea was tall and angry. I was a little bit shorter. She smoked cigarettes. I worked in a store that sold things. We always walked to this same corner, Thirty -- seventh and what's -- it, Third Avenue, in New York, because it was easier to get a cab there, and the entire time we were in love." Nice.
Looking over the book again, I think the second chapter was probably my second favorite, and I think the third was the third best ...
... which tips me off to a trend: like many books held together by a clever device like the adverbs theme here, the veneer eventually wears thin and the story suffers. After some reflection, I think that if I read some intermediate story first, that might have become my favorite. If I read the first one last, it might have started to feel as weary as I did when I finally put the book aside.
If I had it to read over again, I'd leave it at my bedside and pick it up every third night or so. I don't want to undervalue Mr. Handler's writing, which is smart and efficient and fun to read. But I can't escape the feeling that because of the book's hallmark timing, vocabulary, and style it is damned to be good but not great.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
For those locked in a modern romance with words, July 30, 2006
You know how sometimes you read so much of an author that his tone of voice, his quirky eye for quirky things, his attachment to certain moods and turns of phrase and senses of humor become fully acclimated to your own tone of voice, your own quirky eye, your own moody and wordy and humorous attachments, at least in your own head, so that you forget that they came from somewhere and just think, "That's the way things are; this is the way I think about the way things are," and you think, "This is how the world is, to me; this is how I am, in the world," and then you pick up another book by that author and you think, "This is interesting, but, frankly, he's just saying what passes in my own mind, my own everyday mind, and how hard is that--I do it all the time," and it takes you a while to realize that the reason the earth isn't trembling as you read is not that you could have written this book just by being in the world, no, but that the book is written in the very language in which your mind has been taught to think, and you have to realize that before you can realize what new kinds of things it's saying to you this time?
That's how I am with Daniel Handler. I don't love all his books. Of course, I am devoted to the splendid Series of Unfortunate Events. I enjoyed The Basic Eight very much, but it didn't place Handler in my pantheon of Writers Too Brilliant To Be True, alongside the likes of Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, and Haruki Murakami. And I was actively disappointed by Watch Your Mouth, which just didn't work, somehow. But last night I stayed up late finishing his most recent work, Adverbs, and I realized around 1:37am that all the barely conscious judgments I'd been passing on the book as I read, ranging from the enchanted to the skeptical, were not at all the point. The point is that this writer's writing--its voice, its perhaps irritating delight in words, particularly in how they warp the real into truer shapes, its willful confusion of the funny and the sad, its dead-on sense of the infuriating, its sublimation of its fury into wordplay, because where else is it going to go--this writing rewrote my own mental processes some time ago, and now Daniel Handler and I are in a relationship. Probably a permanent one. I'm living in his waking dream of the world. It's useless for me to say, "This book was really great" or "This book thinks it's too clever by half," because I might as well be giving a book report on the weather.
That said, I could add that this is the first piece of Handler's writing under his own name that demonstrated to me how moving he can be. Never sentimental, of course, because sentiment has to believe on some level that it lives outside of wordplay, and nothing in a Handler novel does. But his chapters on the friendships between women were captivating--I was reminded of a Dorothy Parker story I have to look up to be sure it really exists--and by whatever devices and sleights of hand, the book did leave me with the sense that I'd just read as true an exposition of Love as a young, self-conscious, too clever, wordy person can find.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Handler's characteristic wit in an "art" book, July 25, 2007
My first exposure to Daniel Handler was his Series of Unfortunate Events writing as Lemony Snicket. I was delighted with his clever dry wit. I appreciated how he captured the absurdity of mundane things. His turns of phrase were frequently genuinely hilarious. Inspired, I read his other works in this order, Watch Your Mouth and The Basic Eight. Of the two, I was more impressed with the latter (his earlier work). I found the narrative compelling while still enjoying the dry clever wit I had so appreciated in A Series. Watch Your Mouth also aptly displayed his sense of humor and his keen ability to take you into the minds of his characters. However, I did not appreciate the narrative so much. I relatively enjoyed the book but felt like something was missing. It was surreal somehow and left me feeling a little off and incomplete; like I wasn't quite sure what I had just experienced.
This brings me to his latest work, Adverbs: A Novel. The writing and style is classic Handler. And I find it impossible not to appreciate his very special literary talents. His ability with words and mundane thoughts is simply unmatched. We are being treated to the craft of a genius. That said, again, I felt the narrative was wanting. Of course, this is not a standard novel. As others note, the chapters are connected but not by a single plot weaving its way to a conclusion. No, each chapter can stand alone, though it likely shouldn't. Surely Handler has some master plan behind it all, but I could not for my life identify what it was. Yes, the book is about love - whatever that means. I find myself asking that very question... what is love? Maybe he wants us to search ourselves for that answer... maybe not. He tells us that love is in the doing, or more precisely "how" we do it. Probably there is truth to that, but I am not sure how it relates to what I am reading.
There are recurring magpies, volcanoes, taxis, musicians, and even names or plights of characters, many of whom could be the same people but somehow likely are not. As he takes us into the minds of these people (as only he can), there is often a strong sense of paranoia or suspicion. But time and again we never see the narrative outcome of these things. I am left asking what they were really thinking... what really happened? It just feels like there is something else there; yet it remains out of reach. Some readers may enjoy such an experience. I don't particularly.
I compare reading Adverbs to watching an "art" film. It's an "art" book. The point is not in the plot or the meaning but in the experience. I, however, like my experiences with a point. The experience alone is just hollow to me. I didn't really want to finish the book but I forced myself to. Even with a chapter remaining, I looked at the book and sighed. "Do I have to?"
I think Handler is an amazing talent. Selfishly, I just hope he puts that talent to use in a way that I will find more appealing. Putting his genius into a more conventional narrative would be most welcome.
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