Saturday, December 16, 2017

Review: "All the Dirty Parts" by Daniel Handler


Despite it’s childish nature, even when it is describing things like oral sex and hardcore internet pornography, there is something about Daniel Handler’s slim 135 page novel All the dirty Parts that feels very real. It is a major improvement over his first novel and the only other book of Handler’s that I have read The Basic Eight. With the character of Cole, a young teen whose sexual appetite feels more like an infection than a natural outgrowth of puberty, Handler presents a person who is at times clueless of the consequences of his actions but also sympathetic because of how little the world around him has anything to offer. I was worried coming into this book knowing Handler’s politics, but this is not a treatise on sexual assault or an indictment of male sexuality (thank god), but it goes much deeper and asks important questions about where sexual attraction and love correlate and don’t and how to possibly find a balance between these two natural human feelings that more often than we want to admit lead us astray. This is a short book not just in length, but also in its structure, with scenes lasting from a few pages to a few sentences. It becomes tawdry at times, but not as much as I thought it would, especially during a section where something happens between him and Alec, which reveals Cole’s detachment from his world.  And once Cole meets Grisaille, whose implications are predictable, Cole’s armor and the full weight of his behavior comes back to hurt him in ways that are expected but still very sad. He reminded me a bit of Telly from Kids but not nearly as monstrous. It ends sadly in a whirlwind of confusing emotions, but one gets the sense that Cole has learned a valuable lesson. This is a book with a lot of heart and that is unexpectedly warm despite its coarse and sometime unappealing subject matter.

Rating: 4/5

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