Brent's review
Adverbs: A Novel
by Daniel Handler
Brent's review
Adverbs: A Novel by Daniel Handler
Brent's review
rating:
recommended for: old hardhats, young nuns
I've never read Handler's kid stuff but Adverbs did make me feel young again, if you don't mind that dust-smudged cliche. Not that I'm old even. And I certainly don't yearn for a lost childhood. Adverbs, the novel, or rather Adverbs: A Novel, made English over for me again, for the little while I was inside it. I had that giddy feeling I remember from my toddling times after reading my first "grown-ups" book -- that is, my first book without pictures. I don't know what that book was but it doesn't matter. It's the feeling that's important, that twang of wonder. And I have to say with some chagrin, because it makes me sound sentimental (or simply mental), but this book gave me the grins, like one of those drugs plucked from under forest ferns I haven't taken since high school. I felt like a fool while reading this book. The kind of fool that people point too and say: "That idiot must be the luckiest man alive."
