Synopses & Reviews
It's first semester senior year, and Flannery Culp needs her friends more than ever. Her homeroom teacher is a tyrant, her biology teacher is a pervert, and in a few months the Winnie Moprah Show will broadcast vicious lies calling her a Satanic murderer when they really mean murderess. Flan needs Kate, even though she gossips incessantly. She needs Gabriel, even though he has a scarcely requited crush on her. She needs V_____, whose name has been changed to protect her wealthy family. She needs Douglas, who can get absinthe. She needs Lily, she needs Jennifer Rose Milton, but most of all she needs Natasha beautiful, brave Natasha who is turning her calculus teacher's advice do something into a formula for panache. Flannery needs all of the Basic Eight, because high school can get so stressful, you just want to kill someone.
Review
"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." Publishers Weekly
Review
"The Basic Eight is both a delicious entertainment and an unsettling statement on the irrationality of adolescence." Max Winter, Time Out New York
Review
"Imagine being young, messed up, and too smart for your own good. Flannery Culp is all three. I followed her adventures with admiration and envy because Daniel Handler is one of the sharpest, funniest, and best writers around." Kit Reed, author of Weird Women
Review
"Dazzlingly funny...covertly lyrical, and absolutely without parental supervision, The Basic Eight manages to be amoral and humane simultaneously." Mark O'Donnell, author of Let Nothing You Dismay and Getting Over Homer
Review
"Flannery Culp is Holden Caulfield in drag, forty-five years later." Peter Lefcourt, author of The Woody and Abbreviating Ernie
Review
"If you can resist Daniel Handler's hell-raising powers, fair warning: A wicked young century starts here without you." Lois Gould, author of Mommy Dressing and Medusa's Gift
Review
"A funny, unique novel that single-handedly returns high-school revenge fantasies to their rightful owners." Joanna Torrey, author of Hungry
Review
"Like no other book, The Basic Eight demands to be read twice. Do." Stephin Merritt, lead singer of the Magnetic Fields
Synopsis
Flannery Culp wants you to know the whole story of her spectacularly awful senior year. Tyrants, perverts, tragic crushes, gossip, cruel jokes, and the hallucinatory effects of absinthe Flannery and the seven other friends in the Basic Eight have suffered through it all. But now, on tabloid television, they're calling Flannery a murderer, which is a total lie. It's true that high school can be so stressful sometimes. And it's true that sometimes a girl just has to kill someone. But Flannery wants you to know that she's not a murderer at all she's a murderess.
About the Author
DANIEL HANDLER is the author of the novels The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth and, as Lemony Snicket, the bestselling collection of childrens novels entitled A Series of Unfortunate Events, which has sold more than sixty million copies worldwide, has been translated into thirty-nine languages and was adapted into a feature film starring Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep.