A dramatic meditation on love both fleeting and everlasting, 'Adverbs' is a serious work of fiction by one of today's most innovative voices, and famed author of the Lemony Snicket series.
'Adverbs' marks the return of Daniel Handler to adult fiction as he tackles life's most complicated and compelling noun: love. In a series of intersecting narratives that explore variations of that ineffable feeling, Handler crafts a moving and shifting story exploring the frustrating glory of this most troublesome of emotions.
Two friends, one dying and one lonely; an adolescent's first homosexual stirrings for his sister's boyfriend; a doomed, enormously inappropriate tryst between a taxi driver and his passenger; a high-school crush that falls painfully short of a movie projected on a grungy screen. Handler's characters experience love in all of its dark, triumphant, devastating and sneaky forms. In 'Adverbs', Daniel Handler reveals to us how the most universal of themes is also the most unknown.
'Love was in the air, so both of us walked through love on our way to the corner. We breathed it in, particularly me.'
Show moreA dramatic meditation on love both fleeting and everlasting, 'Adverbs' is a serious work of fiction by one of today's most innovative voices, and famed author of the Lemony Snicket series.
'Adverbs' marks the return of Daniel Handler to adult fiction as he tackles life's most complicated and compelling noun: love. In a series of intersecting narratives that explore variations of that ineffable feeling, Handler crafts a moving and shifting story exploring the frustrating glory of this most troublesome of emotions.
Two friends, one dying and one lonely; an adolescent's first homosexual stirrings for his sister's boyfriend; a doomed, enormously inappropriate tryst between a taxi driver and his passenger; a high-school crush that falls painfully short of a movie projected on a grungy screen. Handler's characters experience love in all of its dark, triumphant, devastating and sneaky forms. In 'Adverbs', Daniel Handler reveals to us how the most universal of themes is also the most unknown.
'Love was in the air, so both of us walked through love on our way to the corner. We breathed it in, particularly me.'
Show more/ Lead title / Includes PS Section A dramatic meditation on love both fleeting and everlasting, 'Adverbs' is a serious work of fiction by one of today's most innovative voices, and famed author of the Lemony Snicket series. / From the bestselling author of the Lemony Snicket series, comes a brilliant narrative that explores and celebrates the many forms of love. / The Lemony Snicket series has sold over 3.5 million copies in the UK to date. / 'Adverbs' attracted widespread review coverage in hardback and will do so again in paperback.
Daniel Handler is the alter ego of Lemony Snicket, author of the ‘Series of Unfortunate Events’ books. Handler's two novels are ‘The Basic Eight’ and ‘Watch Your Mouth’. He also performed accordion and keyboards on the Magnetic Fields ambitious and critically acclaimed ‘69 Love Songs’. Handler lives in San Francisco with his wife and child.
'The ingenuity and panache of these stories is instantly attractive.' Daily Telegraph 'One of our most dazzling literary conjurers shuffles the deck of contemporary consciousness and desire. A thrilling feat of tragic magic.' Michael Chabon 'Handler's writing is artful, perverse, irreverent, truthful and ridiculous -- but it's rarely less than brilliant.' New Statesman 'Witty, perplexing!This is an interesting and intelligent work, of which I think Lemony Snicket would be proud.' Literary Review 'Cleverly held together!as thought-provoking as it is confusing.' FT Magazine 'Exuberantly funny voice and ability to lard his stories with details that return, pages later, with multiplied resonance.' Scotsman 'Handler shows great skill in drawing characters and telling their stories. Beguilingly, humorously and at times brilliantly. Definitely worth reading!' Express 'He's enjoying himself. He's simply taken the tricks out for a joyride and the reader has been invited along.' Sunday Business Post
Handler, who as Lemony Snickett writes the "Series of Unfortunate Events" novels for children, returns to adult fiction with this collection of intertwining vignettes about love in all of its adverbial misery. Each piece, with an adverb for a title, focuses on young men and women negotiating the minefields of intimate relationships. People disappear, only to reappear in later stories skewering assumptions that were first developed in the earlier tales. In "Obviously," a young usher has a crush on Lila, whose boyfriend is cheating on her. In "Soundly," Lila appears in a bar, suffering from terminal cancer, having a last good time with her best friend, Allison. In "Wrongly," Allison is driving Lila's car to graduate school when she becomes involved with an unsuitable young man. The stories feature two recurring images: that of the magpie picking up glittering pieces of material and depositing them in other stories, reflecting reality at different angles, and that of a catastrophic explosion-possibly natural, possibly human-made-that destroys everything and everyone in its wake. The stories are clever, unsettling, confusing, and often brilliantly moving. The author's reputation will create public library demand. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/06.]-Andrea Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
'The ingenuity and panache of these stories is instantly attractive.' Daily Telegraph 'One of our most dazzling literary conjurers shuffles the deck of contemporary consciousness and desire. A thrilling feat of tragic magic.' Michael Chabon 'Handler's writing is artful, perverse, irreverent, truthful and ridiculous -- but it's rarely less than brilliant.' New Statesman 'Witty, perplexing!This is an interesting and intelligent work, of which I think Lemony Snicket would be proud.' Literary Review 'Cleverly held together!as thought-provoking as it is confusing.' FT Magazine 'Exuberantly funny voice and ability to lard his stories with details that return, pages later, with multiplied resonance.' Scotsman 'Handler shows great skill in drawing characters and telling their stories. Beguilingly, humorously and at times brilliantly. Definitely worth reading!' Express 'He's enjoying himself. He's simply taken the tricks out for a joyride and the reader has been invited along.' Sunday Business Post
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