The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Maybe, generations ago, young people rebelled out of some clear motive, but now, we know we’re rebelling. Between teen movies and sex-ed textbooks we’re so ready for our rebellious phase we can’t help but feel it’s safe, contained. It will turn out all right, despite the risk, snug in the shell of rebellion narrative. Rebellion narrative, does that make sense? It was appropriate to do, so we did it.”- The Basic Eight, Daniel Handler

Flannery Culp wants you to know the whole story of her spectacularly awful senior year. Tyrants, perverts, tragic crushes, gossip, cruel jokes, and the hallucinatory effects of absinthe -- Flannery and the seven other friends in the Basic Eight have suffered through it all. But now, on tabloid television, they're calling Flannery a murderer, which is a total lie. It's true that high school can be so stressful sometimes. And it's true that sometimes a girl just has to kill someone. But Flannery wants you to know that she's not a murderer at all -- she's a murderess.

Hey guys! Hope everyone had a good Christmas! I had a nice holiday and the first of my Christmas book reviews will be up tomorrow. I actually read this before Christmas, but then got too distracted to write a review by, well, wrapping presents, baking cookies, and watching countless Drawfee videos, my new favorite YouTube channel. Anyway, let's get into the review.

I've never been a Daniel Handler or Lemony Snickett fan, surprising since I love morbid shit like the kind of books he writes. There's just something about his writing that's always kind of turned me off. I think part of the problem is that he's a very gimmicky writer- in this case each chapter ending in vocabulary and study questions-, that and his parodies or satires are too obvious to me to be funny. The reason why The Basic Eight didn't work for me is because it was trying so hard to be funny, and it wasn't like Handler was breaking new comedic ground by making fun of Oprah Winfrey or talk show moralists. 

I think also I encountered this book at the wrong time. It's soon to be 20 years old and it feels every year. Oprah's not as big of a presence as she used to be, people don't freak out about drug use in teenagers the way they used to, and now our travelling moralists are more along the same lines as Al Sharpton. It's not yet old enough to become a charming relic of the late 90s, nor does it have a certain timeless quality that makes it transcend its age. 

I want to go back to the unfunniness of it, which is likely The Basic Eight's biggest flaw. This is a failed stand-up comic of a book, with every joke leaving me staring blankly at the screen of my iPad waiting for the punchline. I can see that Handler was going for a Heathers kind of feel to the novel, but the reason why that movie survived through the years is because it focuses on and draws its humor from a topic as timeless as mean girls in high school. If The Basic Eight had taken its cues from that, the book's satirical punches probably would have actually landed.

But take away the comedy and painfully dated drug references and what do you have? At its heart, a basic The Secret History-type storyline, complete with its checklist of characters. Or at least, it would have a character checklist if any of the other characters besides Flannery were fleshed out at all. One thing I noticed about all these The Secret History-type novels is that they miss the main thing that makes The Secret History work so well- its characters, and how well drawn and defined and developed they are. Most authors who try and write books like Tartt's seem to think that the mystery and the setting is why people loved the original, which is why they focus so much on that aspect and seem to regard their characters (besides the narrator) as being interchangeable vehicles meant to add ambiance. Which brings me to another point- these narrators have way too much to do with the plot. In The Secret History, Richard took a backseat to the story, and his character wasn't as important as Henry et al. In this book, Flannery takes the center stage, and by the end I couldn't tell Kate from Jennifer Rose. 

Despite writing all of this, I didn't really hate The Basic Eight. It just wasn't my kind of book, and, to be honest, I wish I had DNFed it instead of forcing myself to get through it. This is the kind of book its easier to understand what it did wrong than what it did right, and the best thing I can say in the book's favor is that it didn't piss me off enough for me to hate it. But if you really wanted to read it, don't let me stop you. I'm sure you'd like it more than I did.

5 out of 10