Pages

Monday 8 December 2014

Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler

After reading heaps and heaps of reviews about how people loved this book, I can't help but feel like I'm missing something here.

Did we read the same book? Honestly, I don't see how I'm supposed to feel anything reading about this relationship (if you can call it that). From the start it was painfully clear that these two weren't meant to be together. Min is a pretentious film-lover, Ed is a typical jock. ON THE FIRST DATE he isn't getting her. I never believed they were in love for one second, let alone 300-odd pages.


This leads me to another problem. This entire book is Min writing her ex a letter about their relationship. Except their relationship didn't even last two months. This coupled with the way she narrates it just implies to me that she became waaaaaay too obsessed and for no real reason. Ed isn't attractive, he isn't charming or witty or charismatic in any way. Am I supposed to see this as Min being a silly teenager? If so, then the execution is very poor because it felt accidental. Also, why write a book about it and make the prose so very literary?

The writing style is maybe the only thing that made this book tolerable and that's not saying much. It's pretentious, the sentences go on far too long and Min spends way too much time getting to the point. I can't say I felt particularly attached to any of the characters. The illustrations are nice I guess? All in all, a flimsy book held together by pretty artwork and presentation. Not worth spending time or money on.

Overall Score:

No comments:

Post a Comment