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Judge Daniel Handler's The Basic Eight by its cover.
Specifically, its back cover, on which one finds helpful vocabulary words and
study questions to assist one in reading the book. If the droll language, a
clever play on that of textbooks most should recall from their high school
years, piques your interest, turn the book over and flip a few pages in. A
solitaire-playing girl with a dry sense of humor greets you, apparently
imprisoned for some sort of rather serious crime. If you want a story where
everything turns out all right in the end, stop here.
Daniel Handler, author of the A Series of Unfortunate Events
series under the pseudonym Lemony Snickett, has a penchant for black humor,
for gut-wrenching "Why did I laugh at that?" moments, and for
language perfectly suited to his audience but accessible to all. Free from
the content-related constraints of children's books, he takes his gift for
the amusingly disturbing to the world of adolescent angst.
The Basic Eight follows one Flannery Culp through her senior
year at Rower high, an academically intensive public school in San Francisco
(Sound familiar? More on this later). She and her band of friends, vessels of
constant apathy, sarcasm, and mocking eloquence, step with an ironic gait
through the motions of their last year of compulsory education. Senior
year is not without its difficulties, however. From the start, Flannery must
cope with calculus class, a cagey heartthrob, weight anxiety, and an
unsavory, downright creepy biology teacher.
Natasha, Flannery's best friend, is the protagonist's biggest confidant.
Cool, composed, and a little dangerous, she's determined to fix Flannery's
problems. Coaxing her friend to take action or just stepping in and doing it
herself, Natasha catalyzes a spiraling chain of events with no good end.
Even with a slightly corrupting friend, a responsible,
academically-motivated teenager like Flannery should have enough self-control
to stop her from doing something really stupid, right? Just as we're
wondering this, our friend alcohol comes into play, along with its more
potent companion absinthe. Irresistible to the group and its love of
tongue-in-cheek sophistication, the green liqueur plays a part in the
increasingly sticky situations in which Flannery finds herself.
The specifics of the plot are not particularly important to the
enjoyment of the book. The power of the novel comes from the familiar,
accessible voice of Flannery as the narrator. Most of the time she's a
bemused, detached observer, witty and together, but occasionally an angsty,
confused 18 year-old comes out, irrationally obsessed over the most mundane
things. The writing works because we've all been there, wise and practical
advisors to others despite our blindness to our own faults.
The book is disturbing, sure, but it's also hilarious at times. Handler
has a great sense of authenticity when writing about teenage life, and San
Francisco life in general. Whether it's his take on the Haight, "a
neighborhood full of hippie preteens and bookstores dedicated to the
legalization of marijuana," or college, "a place where I can read
literature in musty but well-lit libraries and play frisbee with people of
different ethnicities," each description hits home, provoking a chuckle
as I compare my occasionally idealized world to his sardonic look back on
adolescence.
The Basic Eight, I believe, offers a quick, fun read for about
anyone out there. However, there's a certain subset of American youth who
will derive more pleasure than usual from Handler's book. These youth are
students at San Francisco's Lowell High, or those familiar with the school
and schools of its type. Rower High is based on this school, with a location,
faculty, and culture completely identical, though with a few phonetic
reorganizations of teacher names. Our gut squirms up a little tighter than
others' as we laugh at Flannery cutting Calculus to sit in the library,
because we've done the same. We may not (to my knowledge) have the same
problems with sexual harassment, absinthe, or murder that the Basic Eight
encounter, but aside from that, Flannery Culp narrates a good portion of our
daily lives. It's funny, and a little disturbing too-a great inside joke
that occasionally hits a little too close to home.
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