About the Author

Daniel Handler has written three novels under his own name, including The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and Adverbs, and many books under the name Lemony Snicket, including All the Wrong Questions, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and the picture book 13 Words.

Reviews

Flannery Culp is 19, precocious, pretentiousÄand incarcerated. Accused of Satanism and convicted of murder, she and her seven friends (the "Basic Eight") have been reviled and misunderstood on the Winnie Moprah Show and similar tabloid venues. So Flannery has typed up and annotated the journals of her high school years in order to tell her real story: "Perhaps they'll look at my name under the introduction with disdain, expecting apologies or pleas for pity. I have none here." Handler's sharply observed, mischievous first novel consists of Flannery's diaries from the beginning of her senior year to the Halloween murder of Adam State and its aftermath. The journals detail Flan's life in her clique of upper-middle-class San Francisco school friends, who desperately emulate adulthood by throwing dinner parties and carrying liquor flasks. Kate ("the Queen Bee"), Natasha ("less like a high school student and more like an actress playing a high school student on TV"), Gabriel ("the kindest boy in the world" and in love with Flan) and the rest begin experimenting with the hallucinogen absinthe. Squabbles once easily resolved grow deeper and darker when Natasha poisons the biology teacher who has been tormenting Flan. Should the Basic Eight turn on, and turn in, one of their own? Handler deftly keeps the mood light even as the plot careens forward, and as FlanÄnever a reliable narratorÄbecomes increasingly unhinged. The links between teen social life, tabloid culture and serious violence have been explored and exploited before, but Handler, and Flannery, know that. If they're not the first to use such material, they may well be the coolest. Handler's confident satire is not only cheeky but packed with downright lovable characters whose youthful misadventures keep the novel neatly balanced between absurdity and poignancy. (Apr.) FYI: The Basic Eight has been optioned for film by Bridget Johnson, producer of the hit film As Good As It Gets. Handler's second novel, Watch Your Mouth, will be published by St. Martin's in winter 2000.

First novelist Handler has all the teenage issues down patÄbelonging, power, loyalty, drugs, and body imageÄas he sets about proving just how dangerous high school can be. As Flannery Culp edits her journal of the previous year in prison, we follow Flan and her friends (the Basic Eight) through the fall of their senior year. Adults are generally absent, except for a few teachers who matter. Flan's beautiful friend, Natasha, is worth close attention. Handler's writing is witty and perceptive, especially as schools and society are parodied, and he makes clever use of vocabulary and study questions. But as a brutal murder unfolds and lives are ruined, the "wonderful, wicked fun" promised by the book jacket faded for this reviewer. The novel has been optioned for film, so expect to see it on the screen, a tragedy larger than the Othello Flan's drama club is staging. Recommended with reservations.ÄRebecca Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights