We Are Pirates by Daniel Handler

Mega-bestselling author Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) gives us his long-awaited new novel for adult readers: a dark, rollicking, stunningly entertaining human comedy. A boat has gone missing. Goods have been stolen. There is blood in the water. It is the twenty-first century and a crew of pirates is terrorizing the San Francisco Bay. Phil is a husband, a father, a struggling radio producer, and the owner of a large condo with a view of the water. But he'd like to be a rebel and a fortune hunter. Gwen is his daughter. She's fourteen. She's a student, a swimmer, and a best friend. But she'd like to be an adventurer and an outlaw. Phil teams up with his young, attractive assistant. They head for the open road, attending a conference to seal a deal. Gwen teams up with a new, fierce friend and some restless souls. They head for the open sea, stealing a boat to hunt for treasure. We Are Pirates is a novel about our desperate searches for happiness and freedom, about our wild journeys beyond the boundaries of our ordinary lives. Also, it's about a teenage girl who pulls together a ragtag crew to commit mayhem in the San Francisco Bay, while her hapless father tries to get her home.

I LOVE Daniel Handler's style. LOVE it. I know it's not for everyone, but it is for me.

(I read this on vacation and I read part of it aloud to my traveling companions. They stared at me blankly and one of them said, “I think he's trying too hard.” WHATEVER.)

Look: if you like Daniel Handler's pretentious, hilarious, jam-packed sentences: you will like this. If you do not like Daniel Handler: this will not convert you.

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“I don't want a date,” Gwen said. No one would understand this. It is the presumed mission of all women, a quest for a man, and no amount of bloodshed can dissuade the myth.

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AMAZING, HONESTLY

This book was very hard to enjoy, but I enjoyed it anyway.

Handler writing as Snickett wrote some of my favorite books of all times (really, the Series of Unfortunate events just may have made me a slightly better person), but I was somewhat disappointed with a few other of his books I ventured into. I was not sure what to think, but I won a copy of Pirates and a request for a review, so I decided to work through it no matter what. I am glad I did.

We are pirates begins with deliberate attempts to confuse the reader and to create a surreal and bleak world, both physically and psychologically. Handler succeeds in disorienting us from the first chapter, and this disorientation continues to the end. He also succeeds in creating a cast of utterly unlikable characters–the world he presents here, if it were the real one, I think I might become an advocate of suicide.

The basic plot – disaffected and unattached people run away to become pirates – could be the foundation for a rollicking good time book, full of fun and adventure. I thought perhaps that was where the book was heading. Handler quickly pulled that rug out from under my feet, which at this point in history is a phrase that means he took me by surprise and suddenly removed support for my misguided idea. Well, I shan't tell what happens, but when our pirates raid their first ship, it was a tough read.

I'm glad I finished. For all the book's difficulties and Handler's refusal to make the fun book I was hoping for, at the end I believed that I had read about real people, who really changed because of their encounter with the same real life I meet every day. I did not enjoy it so much as respect it. Handler played with my emotions and he won.