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    Adverbs: A Novel
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    Adverbs: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Adverbs: A Novel
    Ebook266 pages4 hours

    Adverbs: A Novel

    By Daniel Handler

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Hello.

    I am Daniel Handler, the author of this book. Did you know that authors often write the summaries that appear on their book's dust jacket? You might want to think about that the next time you read something like, "A dazzling page-turner, this novel shows an internationally acclaimed storyteller at the height of his astonishing powers."

    Adverbs is a novel about love -- a bunch of different people, in and out of different kinds of love. At the start of the novel, Andrea is in love with David -- or maybe it's Joe -- who instead falls in love with Peter in a taxi. 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. So is Allison, who is married to Adrian in the middle of the novel, although in the middle of the ocean she considers a fling with Keith and also with Steve, whom she meets in an automobile, unless it's not the same Allison who meets the Snow Queen in a casino, or the same Steve who meets Eddie in the middle of the forest. . . .

    It might sound confusing, but that's love, and as the author -- me -- says, "It is not the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done." This novel is about people trying to find love in the ways it is done before the volcano erupts and the miracle ends. Yes, there's a volcano in the novel. In my opinion a volcano automatically makes a story more interesting.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 6, 2009
    ISBN9780061983504
    Unavailable
    Adverbs: A Novel
    Author

    Daniel Handler

    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.

    Read more from Daniel Handler

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    Reviews for Adverbs

    3.5/5

    255 ratings23 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Daniel Handler rocks. I am stalking him across the globe. I had a chance to see him in Wales for the Guardian’s Hay on Wye literary festival both as Lemony Snicket (or more accurately in place of Lemony Snicket) and as Daniel Handler. I also saw him in Seattle for a Mcsweeney’s fundraiser where he had Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie and Postal Service fame) Sarah Vowell (“Assassination Vacation”) and Colin Meloy (the Decemberists) act out a play about his life. He was fantastic on each occasion. He is one of a new breed along with fellow Mcsweeney’s friends Dave Eggers, Michael Chabon, and Jonathan Safran Foer, to name a few, who can write serious literate novels, that are also fresh, funny, witty, and playful.I haven’t yet read Handler’s earlier two ‘adult novels’ (that makes them sound like porn, but it is really just an annoying tag given to novels written by people who also write kid’s books), but Adverbs is an excellent novel. The prose is playful and fun, there is a lot of wordplay and humour, and colourful phrasing, but there is also a lot of heart. The characters are deftly portrayed and are brought fully to life. The book is a set of short stories each titled with an adverb and are about love in some form. The characters all move in and out of each other’s stories as they criss-cross the US and fall in and out of love. Though not all of the characters who have the same name are the same person. It would take a careful and exacting read to truly sort out who is who and who knows who and who loves or loved who. But each of the stories are well written and engaging. The characters are lively and fun, and also depressing or creepy, and often sad (how could you write a book about love without sadness?). But they are always real, and always compelling. There are a lot of pop culture in jokes strewn through the pages, and the book manages to be funny and serious at the same time. No mean feat these days. This is a great collection of stories that also reads as (and is indeed titled as) a novel. This is a rich, warm, funny, and all round excellent book. My stalking will continue. In fact I will see him again this week (finally in my home town) appearing in place of Lemony Snicket. No doubt he will not disappoint.
    • 2/5
      I just read in someone else's review of this that Daniel Handler hangs out in the McSweeney's secret lair and cavorts with Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie) and Colin Meloy (of Death Cab for Pirates).That sounds about right.This book is not dissolute and confusing because it serves its theme. It is dissolute and confusing because Mr. Handler was too busy sorting through his filing cabinet of one-liners and prefab situational jokes to surround them with anything resembling a novelIf he ever decides to put the work in, he'll probably write a good novel.
    • 4/5
      I’m not sure what to say about this book – it is kind of odd and quirky, although I expected this from the man who writes children’s books under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket. However, I found the Snicket books quirky in a darkly humorous but understandable way. In this case, a lot of the book had me scratching my head, furrowing my brow, and say “huh?” The book is a collection of short (sometimes very short) stories supposedly about love (some I would argue are more about friendship or other topics than romantic love). The stories themselves are mostly oddly humorous, with the occasional pathos thrown in for good measure. What had me confused was trying to figure out how, if at all, the stories were all connected. You see, Handler would often repeat names for characters over and over again, and it was hard to tell when this was the same Andrea, for instance, as a previous story or a brand new one. If it appeared to be the same character, it was hard to tell where this story fit in relation time-wise to the other story about the seemingly same character. “Truly,” in my opinion, belonged as either the first or last story of the bunch, instead of just thrown in the middle, as this story seemed to give the most explanation for what the book was trying to do. Overall, I enjoyed the quirky humor, but I would have preferred if there was one coherent story or a bunch of completely unconnected stories rather than the bizarre, possibly related string of stories presented.
    • 3/5
      About the most self-conscious collection of stories one could hope to run across. What begins as playful literary hooliganism ends in a pseudo-masturbatory po-mo-rama.That said, it was rather enjoyable as those things go.
    • 4/5
      A book that rather reminds me of Julian Barnes' "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters", Adverbs is generally very skilfully written and offers some great insights about love. At times the links seem a little forced and a little obvious.
    • 1/5
      I HATED THIS BOOK. HATED. I was hoping that I'd like it - Daniel Handler is also known as Lemony Snicket, and it seemed promising. Turns out is has no plot, the vignettes barely tie together, and NOTHING HAPPENS. I didn't care about any of the characters, the reader is given no reason to invest in them emotionally, and he's got this weird thing about magpies. The prose was pseudo-intellectual: at times it read like free-form poetry and I found myself wondering if it was just beyond my comprehension, but then I remembered that I'm really smart and I read A LOT and realized it's not me, it's that the book is badly written. It SUCKS. Reading this book was like a hate fuck. God DAMN I hated it, but I was going to finish it if it killed me. I'm done, and now I'm burning it. Stupid fucking book.
    • 3/5
      I came to Adverbs having just read The Basic Eight, which I loved. Adverbs has the same poetic prose and even more of the earlier book's whimsy, but when it comes to plot and characters the differences couldn't be greater. One of Daniel Handler's greatest successes in The Basic Eight is managing a large cast of characters, keeping them all individual, memorable and relevant. In Adverbs he does exactly the opposite. On purpose. Multiple characters have the same name and sometimes (but not always) the same traits. This is quite confusing until the author explains it to us (in the first person). This is not a book where the nouns are important – the 'who' and the 'what' – the stars of this story the adverbs – the 'how'. Adverbs is a book where plot and character are subservient to tropes, themes and nuances – an unusual conceit, but not necessarily a bad one. If The Basic Eight is The Deer Hunter, Adverbs is Heaven's Gate (a maligned an underestimated movie). There is much to enjoy here, but approach with caution.
    • 4/5
      I may be one of the few people who really liked this book. It's not the best book in the world, sure. But it was the first grown-up Handler book I read, so that might make me a bit kinder toward it. It's a collection of interrelated short stories that collectively tell the story of a romance, or several romances. It doesn't really come together cohesively--but when has a relationship ever done that?
    • 5/5
      This book is like candy. Sweet, playful, and you just want one more...
    • 4/5
      This author is best known as the writer of the fun Lemony Snicket series of novels for children. I’ve read the first Lemony Snicket novel, and heard the audiobook narrated by Tim Curry, (I just love his voice!) and one day intend to read the rest of the series. The film, which combines the first three novels is immensely stylish and is a favourite at Gaskell Towers too. In these books, Handler has a fabulous and quirky narrative style, telling the story of the three Baudelaire orphans who have a series of unfortunate events happen to them.So after that preamble, you may be interested to hear that Handler has written some adult novels under his own name. You would also expect some off-beat humour and full-on quirkiness and Adverbs doesn’t disappoint.The novel is really a series of short stories, mostly linked, sharing characters and a timeline. Each chapter is titled with an adverb, which occurs physically in the text or in character in that story, including: obviously, particularly, briefly, naturally and symbolically to name a few. Do you know the parlour game Adverbs? You have to act in the style of a particular adverb for the others to work out – well this book is a bit like that!One of my favourite characters, Helena first crops up in the story Particularly in which she ends up working for her husband’s ex, teaching in a school …"She and her husband needed to buy things pretty much on a regular basis. This teaching job did not pay a lot of money, because, let’s face it, nobody gives a flying fuck about education, but it was a temporary position. Helena had been told it would last until the money ran out. From Helena’s experience, she would say the money was going to run out in about nine days.‘It’s a temporary position, like I told you,’ said Andrea, who had said no such thing. ‘Pretty much what happens is, you facilitate the creative expression part. You’re a creative expression facilitator. Get it?’Andrea was an ex-girlfriend of Helena’s husband, so she said ‘Get it?’ like one might say, ‘The same man has seen us both naked, and prefers you, bitch!’ ‘Of course I get it,’ Helena said, but she sighed.Things like this had not happened to her in England. She could not explain the difference, perhaps it was because there wasn’t one. Certainly England had castles, but Helena had not lived in them, although memories of her British life had become more and more glamorous the longer she hung out at hideous places like this."There’s a rich cast of characters who fall in and out of love, requited and unrequited, from a chivalric teenage crush to being immediately smitten with love at first sight. There are all kinds of love too, from full-on romantic to platonic, and ghostly too.Despite being called Adverbs, Handler doesn’t use many of them – I gather that using too many adverbs is considered bad form for proper authors – Elmore Leonard says, ‘Using adverbs is a mortal sin’ in his slim tome 10 Rules of Writing.Adverbs is also a strange book that happens to be full of magpies literally – it is obsessed with these colourful birds and their kleptomaniac character they crop up throughout as a kind of birdy glue – and dangle sentences at you like wonderful shiny jewels: "Love can smack you like a seagull, and pour all over your feet like junk mail."How fabulous is that! Like all proper good metafiction, Handler partially narrates the story, and crops up as himself too. His narration is similarly knowing as that of his alter-ego Lemony Snicket, intimating that he knows what will really happen and he’s not letting on. As he is so much an integral part of the novel perhaps, the female characters tend to dominate the rest, but they’re all interesting so that’s not a bad thing.It is also full of advice on life in general: "You have to be careful when you say what you like two weeks before your birthday. You say birds you’ll get birds. You say the new album by the Prowlers and you better not buy it yourself because it’ll be waiting for you in the bag from Zodiac records…"There was much I really liked about this book. At the risk of sounding like Forrest Gump, it was a little like a box of chocolates – I liked some stories and characters far more than others. However, the quirk factor was right for me, and the literary tricksiness was right up my street, so I will look out for more by this interesting chap.
    • 3/5
      I don't know what I think of this book..... I read it all the way through, and I never found myself arguing with it or anything, but I didn't exactly fall in love with it either. There is some fun wordplay, and not surprisingly Daniel Holder blends the line between author and narrator in some fairly interesting ways..... but a lot of it didn't make much sense and there was never really a coherent storyline or anything.The audiobook is read by one of my favorite narrators, Oliver Wyman. I might have enjoyed it a lot less without Wyman's narration.
    • 3/5
      From the looks of it, I think I am the only one who didn't fully enjoy this one. Then again, I've never read any Lemony Snickett, and this one was received as an ARC and I was "forced to read it." :)Passed along through BookCrossing
    • 1/5
      I think I try to be even-handed in my reviews, so I don't say this lightly: This is the worst book I've ever read and I judge the fuck out of anyone who likes it. Daniel Handler should stick to writing children's novels because honestly, he really sucks at fiction for adults. Spamming the same word 50 times on a page is neither profound nor stylistically interesting.The only good thing about this book is the cover, which is designed by the incomparable Daniel Clowes.
    • 4/5
      This book lost me at first, and then gathered up steam in the middle, then tapered off a little at the end. It's really interlocking stories - except that the characters are sometimes the same and sometimes not. Their history is sometimes the same and sometimes not. But it came full circle, in a way, at the end and wrapped up much more neatly than I expected.Each chapter is named for an adverb, which features obliquely in the story. The conceit is rather annoying. Many are fantastical, like the mock noir of the Snow Queen in a diner. Others are realistic, like the high school boy pining for his fellow movie theater usher. All meditate, a bit preachily, about the nature of love.
    • 3/5
      I wasn't sure about this book when I started it, but its motifs, repetitions, and rotating cast of characters got under my skin. None of them were hugely likeable, but they were all hugely human.
    • 1/5
      I am utterly and totally confused by this book. To start off this review, I think a quote from the author about this book would be appropriate.Quoth Handler "Yes, there's a volcano in the novel. In my opinion a volcano automatically makes a story more interesting." And there is a volcano in the novel, it seems to be one of his favorite things to talk about. In addition to this there is an abundance of birds, alcohol, and taxis.I'd like to provide a timeline and a list of characters but the story is so jambled it wouldn't make sense. The characters all reoccur during the novel but are so unmemorable you can't keep track of who's who. In addition, some seem to have mystical powers in what is otherwise, a realistic fiction type book.The novel is supposed to be about love, different forms and presentations of it. However, if Handler's love is supposed to be real love it scares me. Most of his characters are stalkerish in quality and their love is very superficial. There are several divorces, break ups, hook ups and just plain fake love. At the end it seems several of the female characters are pregnant and possibly this means another type of love to the author.Handler's writing style is very disjointed. I think he tries to be more flowery and "hip" with his writing than he needs to be. It jumps around so much that you just get lost and confused. The book, at 272 pages went on way too long for my tastes. If you like the odd and random type of book go ahead and read, otherwise I recommend spending your time on a better piece of literature.
    • 2/5
      Episodic at best, this really reads like a series of in jokes. I felt that it suffered from characters and plot lines that may or may not have been continuous throughout the book. Still, it was amusing in some spots, but overall, I was kind of confused.
    • 1/5
      In the Series of Unfortunate Events books Daniel Handler achieves a unique, and remarkably pleasing, voice. In this book, he fails utterly.
    • 3/5
      It's okay, a little bit rambling and pompously awkward in places. I like the unique structure and the cleverly titled chapters. There is one very touching story out of the many in this book.
    • 5/5
      I thought this book was beautifully written and very unusual. Each individual chapter was like a long prose-poem and could easily be read just by itself. The whole book also worked as a whole, with arcing issues and themes intertwined in every story. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, necessarily. It's not a particularly easy read - the plot (if there is one) is confused and it's very difficult to keep track of the characters - are they different people with the same name? Or are they the same people every time they show up? Doe it really matter? Couldn't they just be anyone? I do think it's a lovely and meditative book though. I really enjoyed reading it.
    • 5/5
      Adverbs was written by Daniel Handler, better known by his pen name, Lemony Snicket, of A Series of Unfortunate Events. His style is quite different in his works as Handler than as Snicket, which was very stylized to begin with. To appreciate the book, you have to be willing to accept that there are a lot of characters and you will get the names confused. You can go back and try to figure out who's who (I made a chart) but that isn't necessary. I found this book to be surprisingly moving and honest, at least when it comes to the way love can feel. There is a lot of dark humor and some suspension of reality is involved: a ten year old boy and the Snow Queen fall in love over frozen calimari, and San Francisco, as it turns out, was actually built on top of a volcano. Fans of Lemony Snicket will dig this.It seems that many of the other reviewers disliked the short story style, and the lack of connection. However, if you don't sweat the details and simply enjoy the ride, this is a great book.
    • 5/5
      This collection of stories is woven together as delicately as a cobweb. There are dozens of characters whose lives all intersect if just for a moment. All their stories have a lot in common. They are all people in love, whether happily or not, whether knowingly or not, logically or not. Despite the compelling and fascinating characters, it's truly the author's words that are the star of this book. One gets the sense that he is constantly at play. He is weaving his language into a complex tapestry to surprise and delight. He succeeds. Before long, I found myself falling helplessly in love with the author himself. I could have listened to him forever.
    • 4/5
      I picked this one up for two simple reasons: (1) I loved the writing in the Lemony Snicket books and I always thought this guy would write good adult fiction, and (2) the cover was drawn by Daniel Clowes. Also, if I were honest with myself, I'd admit that the quote from Dave Eggers on the back had something to do with it, too, and I'd start to realize that I admire that guy a little too much.But I digress...The premise grabbed me, as advertised on the inside jacket. This is a collection of stories, all defined by the adverbial chapter heading, all about love, in one form or another: hetero, homo, platonic, unrequited, dying, dead, demented, or simply ignorant. (These are all adjectives, by the way, mine, not adverbs, not the chapter headings.) They are all told extremely well. The voice that Handler uses throughout is whimsical yet poignant. His unseen narrator is an intelligent guy with a sense of humor and a flair for irony. He can be funny one minute and heart wrenching the next, and he uses his humor to effectively avoid the sand trap of sentimentalism you can usually find in love stories such as these.That his setting is the west coast, mostly San Francisco, where terrorists are about to strike (or recently have struck), and Seattle, where either a volcano has or is about to erupt, is both incidental and atmospheric, lending some intrigue to these stories that lies just outside your peripheral vision. Also, he overlaps characters, or at least character names. This leads to interesting questions. Is Allison from the first story the same Allison in the last? What about Joe? I'm pretty sure Gladys is always the Ice Queen, and Mike always seems to be Mike. This unconventional use of characters and names is jarring at first, but it forces you to focus on each story individually instead of trying too hard to find a link between them, even when numerous and obvious links exist.So how does it fare using my typical criteria? As individual short stories, each one is rich in its own detail though not exactly original or inspired. Still I'll give him high marks for the collection on the whole. And I've already talked about the voice: excellent. And the writing, let me say, is surprisingly good. Why surprisingly? I guess I just wasn't expecting it, perhaps not from a guy who's primarily famous for children's books, but didn't I notice a spark of something brilliant there, too?Let me make no bones about it: this may not be a book for everyone. The stories may be a little slim and, perhaps, littered with cliches, but the writing more than compensates. For some reason, this book inspires me to write again; I don't know if it's the wit or the wisdom inherent in these stories, it doesn't matter, because any time that happens, I'm a happy man.Invisible Lizard's Unusual Oranges