We Are Pirates

September 22, 2014
Why do pirates appeal? Because, as 14-year-old Gwen Needle puts it, when you’re a pirate, you can “go anyplace” and “do whatever you want.” Compelling ideas to Gwen and her friend Amber, whose supervised lives—Gwen is not even allowed to take the bus alone—are the opposite of pirate freedom. The pirate lore comes from Amber’s grandfather, Errol, who’s just as trapped, in his case by Alzheimer’s and an old-age home he loathes. While Gwen and Amber visit Errol and plot kidnap and ruin together, Gwen’s father, Phil, tries to make it big in radio, which might be consolation for a wife who doesn’t like him much, a house he can’t afford, and a very angry daughter. Can a couple of teenagers, a befuddled old man, and a nursing home orderly really steal a boat and wreak havoc in San Francisco harbor? Sure, says Handler, crossing and mixing genres—dark and light, YA yarn and midlife doldrum—while making readers root for his 20th-century privateers. The book never quite decides how serious it wants to be, becoming dark when the adventure turns violent, then shirking some of the consequences of that darkness, but it does offer a jaunty and occasionally jolting, and honest take on the discomforts of youth, midlife, and old age, and how ineffective we are at dealing with them.

December 1, 2014
Life is a confused and confusing mess-but it still offers plenty of room for mischief, as Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, informs us. When you're a kid, you don't know which side is up half the time. Then you grow up, and you really don't know. So it is with Gwen Needle, who's taken on the nom de crime Octavia (a good one, Octavia having been an exceedingly bad noblewoman of ancient Rome). It's not that Gwen/Octavia is evil; she's just antsy: "Twelve and thirteen she was pretty happy....Then one day boredom just set upon her with a fierceness." She's also penniless, since Dad, an always-pitching radio producer, is always this far away from landing a deal. Popped for shoplifting, she's sent off to a veterans' home to do community service. There, she meets an old coot who's suffering from Alzheimer's-not yet full-blown, Gwen's warned, though the patient is given to flights of fancy and strange thefts of his own. He asks her if she's there for a school project, and when she answers that it's punishment, he growls, "Good, I'm glad. I don't like the school project kids. You know you're going to die when they come at you with a tape recorder." Meanwhile, Dad keeps hoping the heavens will part and he'll finally get to do something interesting with his life, like be an outlaw-a dream his daughter, it seems, is living, along with a band of merry mates, the old coot among them. Handler is a master at depicting the existential chaos all his major characters are living through, and with warmth, sympathy and considerable humor at that. The reader will delight in Gwen and old Errol's escapades, which involve plenty of jawboning but some good old-fashioned larcenous action, too, all of which affords her the street cred to say piratical things like, "You take one more step away and I'll split your gullet" and "Totally verily." Affecting, lively and expertly told. Just the sort of thing to make grown-ups and teenagers alike want to unfurl the black flag.

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Starred review from December 1, 2014
Handler (aka children's author Lemony Snicket) has never been known for writing precisely happy novels, and his latest certainly doesn't deviate. What could easily have been a slightly silly, fantastical romp becomes, instead, in Handler's capable hands, a macabre, darkly human portrayal of family dynamics and growing up in a world running low on adventure. Phil Needle, a semi-successful radio producer (also semi-successful as a father, spouse, and son), hires a new (young, attractive, outspoken) assistant and sets out to further his career. His daughter, Gwen (14, in trouble again), yearns for something more, makes a few new friends, and proceeds to literally steal a boat and attempt old-fashioned piracy in the modern San Francisco Bay, consequences be damned. Perspective switches between Phil, Gwen, and an unnamed first-person narrator, never staying with one individual too long; and, though peppered with black humor, this is a story that, like its characters, is ultimately sad, fragmented, and strange. With each twist, Handler changes the scope of his narrative, and the end result leaves one feeling as unstable and uncertain as the characters themselves. Readers, beware: here be monsters.YA/M: Handler's drawn a young adult crowd before, and the struggles of this high-school-age protagonist are sure to resonate with older teens.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Handler, as Lemony Snicket, has always been popular with adult readers as well as YAs, and that situation should prove true of this? new novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2014

As the Huffington Post says, "If it's possible to be criminally underrated yet also be a millions-selling author, then Handler is it." He's world famous as Lemony Snicket, but not everyone remembers that his last adult book, Adverbs (2006), won considerable praise for being both formally experimental and emotionally arresting. Here, conscientious-to-a-fault 14-year-old Gwen follows her dreams, rounding up a motley crew and becoming a pirate who spreads terror on San Francisco Bay.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2014

Readers expecting a grown-up version of a Lemony Snicket-style tale of dastardly, swashbuckling pirates will unfortunately be dismayed and distressed by Handler's latest novel (The Basic Eight; Watch Your Mouth) for adults. The author replaces clever snark, hyperbole, and action-packed plotlines with disjointed thoughts, one man's gloomy midlife crisis, and some really dark, grisly violence. Phil Needle is a middle-aged schlub who dreams of paying off his expensive San Francisco condo by producing a groundbreaking radio show about enigmatic jazz musician Belly Jefferson. Gwen is his disaffected 14-year-old daughter who suddenly loses interest in the synchronized swimming team and goes on the lam with her new friend Amber, determined to wreak havoc. They are joined by a cackling Alzheimer's patient who loves pirate novels, a Haitian orderly, and Cody Glasserman, the younger brother of Gwen's crush. VERDICT Handler has some stylish moments and seems to be trying to express something meaningful, but his point is obfuscated. Horrific violence can be alluring and effective, particularly if paired with humor as with Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers or Mary Horlock's The Book of Lies. Here it's just grim. [See Prepub Alert, 8/18/14.]--Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.