If you are continuing to read this, however, I'll try to stay away from the major spoilers that will ruin the unique experience of reading this book fresh. The title of The Basic Eight refers to a group of eight high school friends in their senior year of a school supposedly based upon Handler's own alma mater. The book is told in a series of diary entries by a mildly eccentric girl named Flannery Culp, who is going through the normal travails of pre-college pubescence.
The story has an interesting narrative structure. The diary entries are not, strictly speaking, contemporaneous; the novel's conceit is that Flan has edited her diary entries since, so that there is a sometimes confusing mishmash of voices--past Flan and present Flan, so to speak--and a lot of opportunity for meta-commentary ("Oh look! Foreshadowing."). I really enjoyed Handler's funky plays on the diary form. I didn't so much like the meta-crap, which too often felt like Handler was butting in on the narrative. This was especially true when Handler felt the need to criticize some especially lame bit of the story--such as a comment that the previous scene was melodramatic, or that Flan had just uttered a cliche. I understand that this snarkiness is meant to be Flan's, but it too often felt like Handler's.
It's also too bad that Handler felt the need to criticize himself, because some of his stereotypes are spot-on. Sure, many of the characters are caricatures, but they feel like the kinds of caricatures--at once bitchy, vicious, and jealous--that high schoolers really believe are true at that age. (At that age! That was only seven years ago for me.) The one character who is not a caricature is Flan herself, who receives superstar treatment in the novel and emerges as an incredibly interesting, weirdly colored personality.
Note, however, that she's not particularly likeable. Indeed, the one thing I will warn people about is that reading this novel is extremely stressful. Handler distills particularly well the unique horrors of high school, albeit in a somewhat grotesque manner. He is also a superb foreshadower. All this makes The Basic Eight an often unbearably tense novel, far from the light comedy I had expected from the first few diary entries.
The novel's biggest flaw is a part of its ending that I thought was unnecessary. (I'm sorry for being vague here, but I did promise that I would tell no spoilers.) Of course, that flaw appears after a penultimate chapter that is one of the most gloriously confused and, as I said, uniquely stressful stretches of writing I've ever read. I still feel the need to cleanse my soul with something wholesome after all of that. Of course, I enjoyed every minute of it.
(Oh, by the way, Daniel Handler also writes under the pseudonym Lemony Snickett. I hope his children's books aren't as traumatizing as this one.)
Copyright © 2005 Steven Wu 