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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.
Review:
"The qualities that draw millions to Lemony Snicket — absurdity, wicked humor, a love of wordplay — get adulterated in this elegant exploration of love. Handler brings linguistic pyrotechnics to a set of encounters: gay, straight, platonic and all degrees of dysfunctional. Amid the deadpan ('Character description: Appropriately tall. Could dress better.') and the exhausting ('Love was in the air, so both of us walked through love on our way to the corner.') are moments of blithe poignancy: quoth a lone golfer, 'Love is this sudden crash in your path, quick and to the point, and nearly always it leaves someone slain on the green.' In 'Obviously,' a teenage boy pines for his co-worker at the multiplex while they both tear tickets for Kickass: The Movie. In 'Briefly,' the narrator, now married, recounts being 14 and infatuated with his big sister's boyfriend, Keith. 'Truly' begins 'This part's true,' and features a character named Daniel Handler, who has an exchange about miracles with a novelist named Paula Sharp. Handler began his career with the coming-of-age novel The Basic Eight; this lovely, lilting book is a kind of After School Special for adults that dramatizes love's cross-purposes with panache: 'Surely somebody will arrive, in a taxi perhaps, attractively, artfully, aggressively, or any other way it is done.' (May)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"In 'Soundly,' perhaps the most emotionally resonant of the 17 adverbially titled pieces that make up Daniel Handler's 'Adverbs,' the narrator remembers what her driver's ed teacher once said a car horn should convey: 'Not Move along, buddy or I am displeased but I am here. I am here, I am here, I am here!' That teacher has inadvertently offered up the theme of this jigsaw puzzle of a... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) book about lonely people stepping gingerly through the smoldering volcanic debris field of love. '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. Mark Dunn is the author of three novels, including 'Ella Minnow Pea' and 'Zounds! A Browser's Dictionary of Interjections.'" Reviewed by Mark Dunn, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)
Review:
"[A] narrative ingenuity that should delight readers interested in exploring the possibilities of fiction....Handler's prose is warm, funny, smart and addictively readable....Experimental fiction is rarely this emotionally engaging." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"[W]itty — but ultimately wearying....Handler can certainly turn a phrase, but his prose is so overloaded with linguistic acrobatics...it's likely to leave some readers a bit bent out of shape, especially if they were expecting Lemony Snicket for grown-ups." Booklist
Review:
"Adverbs has implausibilities, indulgences and a track list that drags on a few cuts too long. But what stays with you is the music: the elegantly rendered emotion, the linguistic somersaults, the brilliantly turned reminders that there are a million ways to describe love and none of them will ever be the last word." James Poniewozik, The New York Times Book Review
Review:
"In every technical sense...this is an impeccable creation, from start to finish and top to bottom....But Adverbs, unfortunately, while easy to admire, is hard to love quite as much as one should." San Francisco Chronicle
Review:
"Although he oozes wit and he's an astute social observer, [Handler's] voice can feel intrusive in spots, coming between the reader and the story....In the end, despite its quirks, the book's offbeat sweetness charms." Charlotte Observer
Review:
"[C]lever, unsettling, confusing, and often brilliantly moving." Library Journal
Review:
"Adverbs is not an unequivocal success. It makes a valiant case for the indispensability of style, but all the quirky stylistic connections in the world...will not rescue a narrative when it fails to connect emotionally with the reader." Los Angeles Times
Daniel Handler is the author of the novels The Basic Eight and Watch Your Mouth, and as Lemony Snicket, a sequence of novels for children collectively entitled A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Laurie Blum, November 27, 2006 (view all comments by Laurie Blum)
"Adverbs" is a novel about love & I know you will love it, I did!! You'll read about all kinds of people who are in & out of love. In the beginning, Andrea is in love with David -- or is it Joe, etc. At the end of the book, it's Joe who's in the taxi, falling in love with Andrea, or it might not be Andrea... get it? "Adverbs" by David Handler has to be read to believe its uniqueness - don't miss it!
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (28 of 52 readers found this comment helpful)
Jena, November 23, 2006 (view all comments by Jena)
Daniel Handler has a way with words. And characters. I love how, in this book, no character is ever the same from one chapter to the next. Once you get over trying to make sense out of that part, it's fantastic. The characters are at once fantastic and real. You're bound to connect with two or three of them. Actually, this reminded me of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried in the sense that the stories get retold, but are never the same twice. Brilliant.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (24 of 51 readers found this comment helpful)
andy1000, June 16, 2006 (view all comments by andy1000)
i loved this book. usually if a book grips me i can't put it down, but with this one i wanted to read two pages a day for ever. but now it's over. i've tried to read other novels since but they're just not the same. i just keep wishing they were Adverbs. by Daniel Handler.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (37 of 72 readers found this comment helpful)
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"The qualities that draw millions to Lemony Snicket — absurdity, wicked humor, a love of wordplay — get adulterated in this elegant exploration of love. Handler brings linguistic pyrotechnics to a set of encounters: gay, straight, platonic and all degrees of dysfunctional. Amid the deadpan ('Character description: Appropriately tall. Could dress better.') and the exhausting ('Love was in the air, so both of us walked through love on our way to the corner.') are moments of blithe poignancy: quoth a lone golfer, 'Love is this sudden crash in your path, quick and to the point, and nearly always it leaves someone slain on the green.' In 'Obviously,' a teenage boy pines for his co-worker at the multiplex while they both tear tickets for Kickass: The Movie. In 'Briefly,' the narrator, now married, recounts being 14 and infatuated with his big sister's boyfriend, Keith. 'Truly' begins 'This part's true,' and features a character named Daniel Handler, who has an exchange about miracles with a novelist named Paula Sharp. Handler began his career with the coming-of-age novel The Basic Eight; this lovely, lilting book is a kind of After School Special for adults that dramatizes love's cross-purposes with panache: 'Surely somebody will arrive, in a taxi perhaps, attractively, artfully, aggressively, or any other way it is done.' (May)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews,
"[A] narrative ingenuity that should delight readers interested in exploring the possibilities of fiction....Handler's prose is warm, funny, smart and addictively readable....Experimental fiction is rarely this emotionally engaging."
"Review"
by Booklist,
"[W]itty — but ultimately wearying....Handler can certainly turn a phrase, but his prose is so overloaded with linguistic acrobatics...it's likely to leave some readers a bit bent out of shape, especially if they were expecting Lemony Snicket for grown-ups."
"Review"
by James Poniewozik, The New York Times Book Review,
"Adverbs has implausibilities, indulgences and a track list that drags on a few cuts too long. But what stays with you is the music: the elegantly rendered emotion, the linguistic somersaults, the brilliantly turned reminders that there are a million ways to describe love and none of them will ever be the last word."
"Review"
by San Francisco Chronicle,
"In every technical sense...this is an impeccable creation, from start to finish and top to bottom....But Adverbs, unfortunately, while easy to admire, is hard to love quite as much as one should."
"Review"
by Charlotte Observer,
"Although he oozes wit and he's an astute social observer, [Handler's] voice can feel intrusive in spots, coming between the reader and the story....In the end, despite its quirks, the book's offbeat sweetness charms."
"Review"
by Library Journal,
"[C]lever, unsettling, confusing, and often brilliantly moving."
"Review"
by Los Angeles Times,
"Adverbs is not an unequivocal success. It makes a valiant case for the indispensability of style, but all the quirky stylistic connections in the world...will not rescue a narrative when it fails to connect emotionally with the reader."
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