Why We Broke Up
by Daniel Handler
If you know Daniel Handler better as Lemony Snicket you will automatically know that this story is not going to be your run-of-the-mill break up story. And if you know neither Daniel Handler nor Lemony Snicket, then you're in for some quirky twists and turns along the way.
The premise of the book is a very simple something that we've all heard before: a girl returns some mementos to her ex-boyfriend and writes him a letter about why they broke up. The letter includes everything they did when they were together until they broke up. It's a story everyone's heard a million times over, but everyone's break up story is different.
Min and Ed are the two main characters. I really liked that their names, and all of the names in the story really, were very generic, short names, which kind of pounded in the notion that this breakup thing has or will happen to everyone at some point. This same story. I also thought it was clever that the story really could have happened at any point in time. Except for some midnight phone calls, there really wasn't anything that suggested that it had to be about 2012. Because again, this story could have been about anyone at any time. I personally imagined a mid-90s letter-jacket wearing Ed.
Min. She's awesome. In terms of uniqueness, she's very. She's the kind of person that people call arty, different—watches old films, drinks coffee, throws bittersweet sixteen parties. She's normal though. She's not artsy fartsy and she strives for many of the same goals as everyone else in the book. I kind of like the theme that if everyone is trying really hard to be different then they're all acting the same (hipsters). I liked her point of view and that, though she was new to dating and love and though she was writing an angry letter to her ex, she didn't seem desperate or whiny or any of the annoying post-breakup things a person could be.
I didn't like Ed. I know he's the ex-boyfriend, and if we're reading Min's side of things we're supposed to think he's a douchebagidiotassholesonofabitch, but he was very blurry and not very developed. I think there should have been some more colorful language used to express him as expressed above. Instead he was just kind of there to play the role of the not-so-observentcaringkind basketball boyfriend. I didn't really see the connection the two had to begin with . Min said over and over that she loved him, but I didn't see why. I couldn't find why they got together in the first place.
But if everything in this story is generic what makes this story different? It's the almost satirical way the story is laid out that I liked best—there was the generic break up story, the times when I thought oh, Min, don't do that, and the ending that you could do nothing but expect. It was the kind of story where you could see everything coming (I mean, it's called Why We Broke Up, you can't say you didn't see it coming), yet nothing seemed clichéd at all. It was like Min was having the last laugh. Like she's sitting with a beer at a barbecue ten years later with her hotter-than-hot husband and laughing with her awesomer-than-awesome friends and they're all telling the stories of the idiots they used to date in high school that ended up working behind the register at the Chicken Lickin' Diner.
Yes, liked. Yes, will reread at some point in the future. Yes, book did weigh more than my tiny guppy fish muscles could muster.
☕ ☕ ☕ ☕ - 4/5
The premise of the book is a very simple something that we've all heard before: a girl returns some mementos to her ex-boyfriend and writes him a letter about why they broke up. The letter includes everything they did when they were together until they broke up. It's a story everyone's heard a million times over, but everyone's break up story is different.
Min and Ed are the two main characters. I really liked that their names, and all of the names in the story really, were very generic, short names, which kind of pounded in the notion that this breakup thing has or will happen to everyone at some point. This same story. I also thought it was clever that the story really could have happened at any point in time. Except for some midnight phone calls, there really wasn't anything that suggested that it had to be about 2012. Because again, this story could have been about anyone at any time. I personally imagined a mid-90s letter-jacket wearing Ed.
Min. She's awesome. In terms of uniqueness, she's very. She's the kind of person that people call arty, different—watches old films, drinks coffee, throws bittersweet sixteen parties. She's normal though. She's not artsy fartsy and she strives for many of the same goals as everyone else in the book. I kind of like the theme that if everyone is trying really hard to be different then they're all acting the same (hipsters). I liked her point of view and that, though she was new to dating and love and though she was writing an angry letter to her ex, she didn't seem desperate or whiny or any of the annoying post-breakup things a person could be.
I didn't like Ed. I know he's the ex-boyfriend, and if we're reading Min's side of things we're supposed to think he's a douchebagidiotassholesonofabitch, but he was very blurry and not very developed. I think there should have been some more colorful language used to express him as expressed above. Instead he was just kind of there to play the role of the not-so-observentcaringkind basketball boyfriend. I didn't really see the connection the two had to begin with . Min said over and over that she loved him, but I didn't see why. I couldn't find why they got together in the first place.
But if everything in this story is generic what makes this story different? It's the almost satirical way the story is laid out that I liked best—there was the generic break up story, the times when I thought oh, Min, don't do that, and the ending that you could do nothing but expect. It was the kind of story where you could see everything coming (I mean, it's called Why We Broke Up, you can't say you didn't see it coming), yet nothing seemed clichéd at all. It was like Min was having the last laugh. Like she's sitting with a beer at a barbecue ten years later with her hotter-than-hot husband and laughing with her awesomer-than-awesome friends and they're all telling the stories of the idiots they used to date in high school that ended up working behind the register at the Chicken Lickin' Diner.
Yes, liked. Yes, will reread at some point in the future. Yes, book did weigh more than my tiny guppy fish muscles could muster.
☕ ☕ ☕ ☕ - 4/5
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