“It’s not you, it’s me.”
“I’m just trying to find myself, and I need to be alone to do that…”
“I’m sorry, but this isn’t working out.”
“I found someone else…”
“I need space.”
“I’m not ready for a relationship.”
“I’m not over my ex.”
“I’m going through a lot with my family/job/school/apartment right now.”
Daniel Handler (who also write as Lemony Snicket, who you probably haven’t heard of. He wrote these super obscure books including A Series of Unfortunate Events, which Netflix is adapting into a TV series) with the help of Maria Kalman shows the rise and fall of one particular relationship in Why We Broke Up. Why We Broke Up has a couple literary honors: Printz Honor (2012), The Inky Awards Nominee for Silver Inky (2012), Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Books of the Year (2011).
According to the author bios, Daniel Handler was dumped at least three times in high school, and Maira Kalman’s heart was broken in high school first by a boy who looked like Bob Dylan and shortly thereafter by one who looked like Leonard Cohen.
Why We Broke Up
by Daniel Handler,
Maira Kalman (illustrator)
354 p. Little, Brown Books. 2013.
Gr 9 Up
After film aficionado Min Green breaks up with the co-captain of the basketball team, Ed Slaterton, she drops a box full of the souvenirs from their love on his doorstep along with a very long “letter.” The letter makes up the text of this book, painfully explaining how the relationship fell apart. Each chapter is introduced with a full-color painting of a memento–from bottle caps to rose petals to movie tickets to condom wrappers–that represents an important element in the decline of their romance. Min’s passion and despair is captured in a stream of consciousness that may be hard for some readers to follow, but the heartbreak is undeniable and almost impossible not to relate to.
The Feels
I knew how this was going to end–the title says it all–but after 300 pages of romance, I wanted a different ending. I wanted to understand the inevitable conclusion the title promised me, yet I also wanted an HEA because I am a romantic and just can’t help but hope.
I didn’t cry, but the book is poignant and exhilerating where ordinary things somehow become extraordinary things in the context of their five week love affair. While the relationship only last a couple weeks, the love story between to teens from contrasting social groups is beautifully portrayed. Honestly, though, despite the sweetness of their courtship, the relationship seemed to doomed to the start for me, because their interests were so completely different. Yeah, yeah, but what about opposites attract? I’m sorry, but there needs to be some common interests or at least desire to understand the other’s interests. Min finds basketball boring and is just counting down the seconds until she can leave the bleachers; Ed refers to the classic movies Min likes so much as “gay.” She goes to his games and he goes to her movies, but it felt more like a sense of obligation to me, something they were supposed to be doing as each other’s significant other.
The one thing that did get annoying after a while was Min’s tireless referencing of old movies. I felt Handler was trying a bit to hard to make her quirky.
The raw emotion of the book is perfectly complimented by Kalman’s illustrations, which, to me, were what made this book so great. They’re poignant, powerful, and emotional, perfectly capturing the sad souvenirs of adolescent heartache.
Handler also created the Why We Broke Up Project, which is a tumblr that allows others to share their stories of heartbreak, which “will enable all of our heartbreak to reach critical mass, so that, unlike [name redacted], it will never bother us again.” It doesn’t look like the site as been updated in a while, but it is still fun to poke around and look through.
Literary Feels 