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Adverbs: A Novel |  |
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Adverbs: A Novel | |
Can Joe help it if he falls in love with people who don't make him happy? And what about Helena—she's in love, but somehow this isn't enough. Shouldn't it be? And if it isn't enough, does this mean she's not really in love? It certainly seems to be spoiling the love she's in. And let's say there's a volcano underneath the city—doesn't that make things more urgent? Does urgency mean that you should keep the person you're with, or search for the best possible person? And what if the best possible person loves someone else—like the Snow Queen, for instance?
This novel may not answer these questions, but nevertheless the author and publisher hope it will be of interest.
Daniel Handler is the author of the novels The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and as Lemony Snicket, a sequence of children's novels collectively entitled A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Handler -- better known as Lemony Snicket, the author of the enormously popular kid-lit "Series of Unfortunate Events" -- has given his adult readers a lot to ponder as they flip over these pieces and work to put them together. Within an atmosphere of impending doom, characters step forward with their attendant baggage, introduce themselves and tell us why true love is so elusive.
And the author tells us things, too -- mostly what love is, metaphorically speaking. Love, apparently, is a lot of different things, from saltwater taffy to acts of Camelot-style chivalry. In a devastating piece called "Briefly," a man who accidentally kills a magpie while playing golf recalls the aching memory of a boyhood crush: "Love is this sudden crash in your path, quick and to the point, and nearly always it leaves someone slain on the green."
Readers of Adverbs are asked to make a dizzying number of connections as they move through the process of putting it all together: Characters who appear early in the book return for reprise visits, or perhaps Handler has mischievously reused their names for totally unrelated characters. The author admits as much himself: "At the end of the novel, it's Joe who's in the taxi, falling in love with Andrea, although it might not be Andrea, or in any case it might not be the same Andrea, as Andrea is a very common name."
The connections -- both the obviously purposeful and the bizarrely tangential -- incorporate repeating story elements. Adverbs is teeming with comically named cocktails (Hong Kong Cobblers, Tipsy Mermaids), things avian (eggs, hummingbirds, lost parakeets and Yellow-billed magpies), along with numerous taxis, bars and diners, a ripped purse and a woman known as the "Snow Queen" who can freeze a man in his tracks with her "Cone of Frost." (Did Lemony just skate through?) When Adverbs works, it works brilliantly and poignantly, taking its ruminations on the complexity and fallibility of love to avian heights. In "Soundly," a dying woman and her friend negotiate a desperate turn of events in the twilight hours of their companionship. In "Naturally," a wrenching tale of loss and disappointment, a murdered man finds love after death only to lose it just as mundane folks do. Other pieces work less successfully, some coming off a little too linguistically cute and clever, or too oblique.
In the end, some readers will wonder why these pieces don't all come together in a satisfying way. But love is a messy thing. In truth, these stories tell us that love is best understood as neither a noun nor a verb. "The miracle is the adverbs," the narrator says in "Truly," "the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe." This bracing reality constitutes both the primary strength of Adverbs -- and its intrinsic flaw. The puzzle may never be completed because the pieces cannot all be there, and those that are, hardly ever connect the way we wish they would. But that is life and that is love.
Reviewed by Mark Dunn
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Daniel Handler, author of the best-selling A Series of Unfortunate Events, captures the intricacies of love—though not necessarily its emotional resonance—in his newest book. Set mostly in a colorful near-future San Francisco that may (or may not) succumb to terrorism or volcanic eruptions, the stories feature Handler's trademark wordplays, ironic humor, and visceral descriptions. While critics praised the magical writing, most expressed confusion over the book's structure. Do the Davids and Andreas that appear in the stories simply share the same name, or are they discrete characters? If the latter, why do they sound alike? While each story entertains and offers a lesson of sorts on love, together the stories fail to coalesce into a larger narrative.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From AudioFile
In a novel too clever for its own good, Daniel Handler, who also writes as Lemony Snicket, explores a big topic: love between people and love between people and the universe. The odd collection of vignettes jumps from one chapter to another and from one set of characters to another, all or none of whom may be related. Oliver Wyman captures the quirkiness of the story line, using flawless timing to highlight every comic nuance and a masterfully light touch on the many confusing characters. Nonetheless, while Handler shows creative genius writing as Snicket, this effort proves to be a series of unfortunate events. R.L.L. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
From Booklist
Handler, best known for the darkly comic Series of Unfortunate Events novels (written under the Lemony Snicket pseudonym), returns to adult fiction with these witty--but ultimately wearying--ruminations on the precarious state of love. The 16 intersecting stories (each headed by an adverb modifying the noun love) display a cadre of couplings: gay, straight, platonic, perverse. In "Obviously," a love-struck movie usher is chagrined to discover that life doesn't imitate art. In "Symbolically," a narcissistic writer ponders the global impact of his novelistic debut. Although Handler's visions are often apocalyptic (San Francisco residents fret over a subterranean volcano about to erupt), in rare moments, he waxes both wistful and wise. "Soundly" reveals the bond between a woman and her dying childhood friend: "She and I were cut from the same cloth, an angry odd quilt." Whether catering to kids or adults, Handler's humor is decidedly offbeat. "Frigidly" features an eccentric older woman known as "Snow Queen" and cocktails with names like "Suffering Bastard" and "Neptune Fizz." Handler can certainly turn a phrase, but his prose is so overloaded with linguistic acrobatics--wordplay, repetitive narrative, and stream of consciousness, to name three--it's likely to leave some readers a bit bent out of shape, especially if they were expecting Lemony Snicket for grown-ups. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This lovely, lilting book...dramatizes love’s cross-purposes with panache." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
编辑推荐 From Publishers Weekly
In 17 intricately linked short stories, Handler brings to life a vivid group of young San Franciscans who are all at some point of falling in or out of love. There's the petulant, jealous yet somehow endearing Helena, a British woman who's followed her husband to America; there's Lila, who breaks her fellow movie-theater ticket-taker's heart even as her own body is shut down with a rare disease; and Keith, once Lila's insensitive boyfriend and later a comic book artist. Some characters show up frequently while others are just walk-ons, but the collection develops as a whole, with the same jokes and anecdotes and snippets of song lyrics or dialogue interwoven throughout with Handler's characteristic metaliterary style. Wyman does an excellent job with the characters' various accents, and he has mastered Handler's ironic tone. However, listeners trying to follow all the story threads may wish they had a print copy of the book to better enjoy Handler's wit and creativity in crafting this collection of fascinating lives.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Daniel Handler, author of the best-selling A Series of Unfortunate Events, captures the intricacies of love—though not necessarily its emotional resonance—in his newest book. Set mostly in a colorful near-future San Francisco that may (or may not) succumb to terrorism or volcanic eruptions, the stories feature Handler's trademark wordplays, ironic humor, and visceral descriptions. While critics praised the magical writing, most expressed confusion over the book's structure. Do the Davids and Andreas that appear in the stories simply share the same name, or are they discrete characters? If the latter, why do they sound alike? While each story entertains and offers a lesson of sorts on love, together the stories fail to coalesce into a larger narrative.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
专业书评 From Publishers Weekly
In 17 intricately linked short stories, Handler brings to life a vivid group of young San Franciscans who are all at some point of falling in or out of love. There's the petulant, jealous yet somehow endearing Helena, a British woman who's followed her husband to America; there's Lila, who breaks her fellow movie-theater ticket-taker's heart even as her own body is shut down with a rare disease; and Keith, once Lila's insensitive boyfriend and later a comic book artist. Some characters show up frequently while others are just walk-ons, but the collection develops as a whole, with the same jokes and anecdotes and snippets of song lyrics or dialogue interwoven throughout with Handler's characteristic metaliterary style. Wyman does an excellent job with the characters' various accents, and he has mastered Handler's ironic tone. However, listeners trying to follow all the story threads may wish they had a print copy of the book to better enjoy Handler's wit and creativity in crafting this collection of fascinating lives.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
