(Don't worry, Shmoop knows it was all the other person's fault.) It's pretty much inevitable, and unfortunately it doesn't really get any easier with practice. Maybe you've already broken some hearts, or someone's broken yours.
And let's face it: Unless you meet your soul mate right out of the gate, you're probably going to experience a few in your lifetime. There's no way around it: breakups stink. What is Why We Broke Up About and Why Should I Care? Try not to feel too badly about how much fun it is to read about their heartbreak: No real teenagers were harmed in the making of this book.
Together, Handler and Kalman have concocted a delightful breakup story-no, not for Min and Ed (it's a bummer for them), but for us. Incidentally, she has a really cool apartment. Kalman's work, like Handler's, is celebrated for its charm and offbeat sense of humor, and she's best known for her illustrated essays and as a cover artist for the The New Yorker. The book is the second in a series of collaborations between these two, who are friends in real life. Though we haven't seen the world of Why We Broke Up in a movie (yet), it comes to life in the novel through the illustrations of Maira Kalman. Much like Wes Anderson, Handler is an architect of intricately imagined worlds. Across the board, Handler's style is glum but cheeky (think Morrissey), and he has a knack for building elaborate mythologies to support the world of his stories. Handler is a humorist who has written other fiction about sex and love, but he's best known for A Series of Unfortunate Events, a collection of children's books he penned under his pseudonym, Lemony Snicket. If you're not familiar with Handler, you're in for a treat. Sick burn, right? And classic real live teenager move. Post-breakup, she's taking time to reflect on each item before dumping them unceremoniously on Ed's doorstep. These items were once treasured by Min, our narrator, who squirreled them away as tokens of her love with Ed Slaterton.
Instead of sparks flying in the face of imminent doom, this book tells the story of a brief relationship between two high school students through a collection of mundane objects like movie ticket stubs and napkins. Only trouble, though, is that real life almost never looks like this.Įnter: Why We Broke Up, Daniel Handler's 2011 novel that takes a wholly different approach to this whole young love schtick. Throw some other Major Life Happenings in the mix-such as cancer, the apocalypse, or becoming a vampire-and you have yourself the makings of some classic young adult lit. With hormone and energy levels running high, young love can be just as awful as it can be perfect, with very little middle ground. People are always saying that young love is the best, but as anyone remotely young (or young at heart, yo) knows, this is simply not true sometimes.
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