Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler
Why We Broke Up is written in the form of a (very long) letter from Min Green to Ed Slaterton, telling him why they broke up and how various items of their relationship correlate that.
I suppose I liked Why We Broke Up, I liked the plot but couldn't really like the characters and it struck me as being pretentious. I think that's the right word. Maybe self-important.
Min, herself, was pretentious. She consistently talked about old movies as if anyone who didn't know them was, in some way, inferior. And she clearly felt that her group of friends was superior to other people simply because those other people were popular. But one of the things that really got to me was the language. Min had a strange way of talking. For example: "I was a fool, is what."
And it was confusing. There were so many parts in which I wasn't sure what was actually going on. Twice I thought that they'd had sex (and I'm still not completely sure what they did; the term eventually used is "everything but") before I figured out they must not have because Min later made a big deal about something Ed said that made her think he was telling her they were definitely going to have sex that weekend. I was often confused like this about what exactly was going on.
The best part of the book, in my opinion, was the pictures. For each item there is a painting (done by Maira Kalman) and they are gorgeous.
I'd heard a lot of good things about this book and so maybe my expectations were too high. And maybe I'm being too critical. I didn't hate it by any means but there were just too many little things that bugged me and so I was disappointed. And in the book, it wasn't exactly a bad book. But it wasn't for me and I probably wouldn't recommend it. I just wanted so much to like it and I couldn't.
Final: B-