Eliza blogged about her favorite moments at ALA a couple of weeks back, but I wanted to give a quick shout-out to mine: meeting Daniel Handler, who readers might know better as Lemony Snicket.
Handler was at ALA to promote his upcoming collaboration with artist Maira Kalman, Why We Broke Up (Little, Brown), which currently holds the title of my favorite book published in January 2012. I have never been so entertained watching an author sign books before: Handler took time to joke with everyone, interrogating the woman in front of me about the man whose heart she broke most recently and teasing me about the illegible handwriting on the Post-It that was supposed to show him how to spell my name. In short, he talks with the same freewheeling charm he displays in his books.
Later, Handler read from Why We Broke Up, interrupting himself with hilarious asides. Told through letters that teenaged Min writes to her ex-boyfriend, Ed, after their breakup, Why We Broke Up attempts to answer that unanswerable question by telling the stories behind objects Min has collected over the course of her relationship with Ed. Handler mentioned after the reading that he liked writing about teenagers because “everything’s more interesting when it happens to a teenage girl.” (He added that he meant that in the least inappropriate way possible.)
Handler is no stranger to writing about teenagers (his first novel, The Basic Eight) or love (the excellent novel-in-stories Adverbs). Here’s a section of the first chapter of Why We Broke Up:
The thunk is the box, Ed. This is what I am leaving you. I found it down in the basement, just grabbed the box when all of our things were too much for my bed stand drawer. Plus I thought my mom would find some of the things, because she’s a snoop for my secrets. So it all went into the box and the box went into my closet with some shoes on top of it I never wear. Every last souvenir of the love we had, the prizes and the debris of this relationship, like the glitter in the gutter when the parade has passed, all the everything and whatnot kicked to the curb.
Interested in reading more? Click here to download a PDF excerpt of the book, complete with Kalman’s illustrations. You can also join the Why We Broke Up project by submitting your breakup story to their site. From the heartbreaking to the hilarious to the mundane, the tales make for good reading—especially when Daniel responds.
