Why We Broke Up

Depicts adolescence as an everyday battle of self-doubt, without moralizing or oversimplifying

Having long ago shown that he’s among the most astute children’s (as Lemony Snicket) and adult (as himself) writers around, Daniel Handler’s 2011 novel is a step between, landing in Young Adult territory. He gets this one right, too: Why We Broke Up – illustrated in the print edition with art by Maira Kalman – depicts adolescence as an everyday battle of self-doubt and dawning self-knowledge, without moralizing or oversimplifying the emotional guts at its mismatched-just-so characters’ hearts. Every new emotion is huge, something Handler renders without hyperbole. (The audiobook is narrated by Khristine Hvam, who nails its tone – jumpy and snotty and cautious all at once.)

Handler’s narrator is Min Green, an outsider suburban teenager who valorizes silent film and plans to direct movies herself. (There are a lot of film references, all delightful – “the party surged around us like the panic in Last Train Leaving, the coaches starting off the festivities with their fat, dumpy dance to ‘I’m the Biggest Man’” – and all made up.) Her boyfriend is Ed Slaterton, eligible high-school basketball star and math virtuoso, to whom Why We Broke Up is addressed. It’s a letter, or series of them, explaining each of the objects in a box she’s returned to him to signal their breakup, after less than two months together. He’s casually cruel; she and her crew are far more highfalutin than his teammates in a game in which Min has absolutely no interest. And as happens to adolescents no less than adults, their hormones overtake them anyway – for a while.