Daniel Handler's Why We Broke Up

 

     Min Green and Ed Slaterton are breaking up, so Min is writing Ed a letter and giving him a box. Inside the box is why they broke up. Two bottle caps, a movie ticket, a folded note, a box of matches, a protractor, books, a toy truck, a pair of ugly earrings, a comb from a motel room, and every other item collected over the course of a giddy, intimate, heartbreaking relationship. Item after item is illustrated and accounted for, and then the box, like a girlfriend, will be dumped.

 

     Since my brain’s still a bit clouded and foggy and not fully functional and can’t do things that require much thinking nor write longer than a brief blog entry in the next few weeks (because my country has just elected a dead dictator’s son, who is obviously bad news, as president), I decide to just grab some books available in our house to read to relax my mind, and one that catches my eye is the novel Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler. I don’t know why we have this book (whose summary is above) in the house. Hehe. My niece probably bought it. There are blurbs at the back of the book which include one from Neil Gaiman, whose writings, incidentally, somebody I know pretends to love. Well, she was gifted with Gaiman books and she either sold or gave them away.

     I read some reviews for the Why We Broke Up and they’re mixed. Some find the book great and entertaining; others find it annoying and too quirky. Incidentally, one of the reasons I choose to read this book is the fact that Daniel handler is also the writer of the Lemony Snicket books.

     I have read a few pages, narration is in first person, and so far, it’s good—hopefully, it stays good.

     And hopefully, too, I can stop writing critically about the dictator’s son after this lest I go missing, I mean, lest I go missing somebody. Lol.