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We Are Pirates, by Daniel Handler
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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.
- Sales Rank: #174672 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-06
- Released on: 2015-10-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.22" h x .82" w x 5.51" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 288 pages
Review
“A witty adult novel by Lemony Snicket author Daniel Handler . . . . Lemony Snicket's gothic humor lingers over this tale of upper-middle-class despair . . . [A] dark and whimsical novel . . . Yes, we are pirates, but we're chained on barren land. Has that theme ever been explored in such a weird mixture of impish wit and tender sympathy?” ―Washington Post
“Superb, written with an unflinching eye for comedy and horror.” ―New York Times Book Review
“Compelling . . . Engaging . . . Near impossible to put down.” ―USA Today
“Honest and funny, dark and painful, We Are Pirates reads like the result of a nightmarish mating experiment between Joseph Heller and Captain Jack Sparrow. It's the strangest, most brilliant offering yet from the mind behind Lemony Snicket.” ―Neil Gaiman
"We Are Pirates will dazzle, disturb, and delight you. It might even do things to you that don't start with the letter D, like remind you what it's like to be young, or convince you that Daniel Handler can do anything." - Jess Walter, #1 NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of BEAUTIFUL RUINS
"There is no writer quite like Daniel Handler. Somehow he manages to work at the intersection of irony and wonderment, whimsy and menace--a space I'm not sure I knew existed until I read his work." - Jennifer Egan, author of A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD
"Daniel Handler turns whimsy into wisdom and the fantastic into the great. He is, of course, a genius." - Lorrie Moore, author of A GATE AT THE STAIRS and BARK
"Daniel Handler [is] something like an American Nabokov." ―Dave Eggers
"I loved it! We Are Pirates is extraordinary! It takes brand new shapes. And that prose is ruthless. Merciless. And then, the next second, it made me laugh out loud. Remarkable story, remarkable characters, remarkable prose. I'll carry that in my head forever." ―Russell T. Davies
“Handler (aka children's author Lemony Snicket) has never been known for writing precisely happy novels, and his latest certainly doesn't deviate. What could easily have been a slightly silly, fantastical romp becomes, instead, in Handler's capable hands, a macabre, darkly human portrayal of family dynamics and growing up in a world running low on adventure . . . . peppered with black humor.” ―Booklist
“If it's possible to be criminally underrated yet also be a millions-selling author, then Handler is it.” ―The Huffington Post
“Handler is a master at depicting the existential chaos all his major characters are living through, and with warmth, sympathy and considerable humor at that. The reader will delight in Gwen and old Errol's escapades . . . Affecting, lively and expertly told. Just the sort of thing to make grown-ups and teenagers alike want to unfurl the black flag.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“Can a couple of teenagers, a befuddled old man, and a nursing home orderly really steal a boat and wreak havoc in San Francisco harbor? Sure, says Handler, crossing and mixing genres--dark and light, YA yarn and midlife doldrum--while making readers root for his 20th-century privateers . . . A jaunty and occasionally jolting, and honest take on the discomforts of youth, midlife, and old age, and how ineffective we are at dealing with them. ” ―Publishers Weekly
“Dark and hilarious . . . arresting. Daniel Handler . . . is a master of quiet suspense. What drives We Are Pirates is a current of love and Handler's strangely beautiful ability to show how even in a chaotic world, our lives have a way of converging if only we stop to notice.” ―Elle
“Daniel Handler--aka Lemony Snicket--is one of the funniest people on the planet and his new novel is further evidence of his gift for offbeat, razor-sharp wit . . . We Are Pirates is high-flying fun and Gwen may be one of Handler's most endearing protagonists.” ―San Jose Mercury News
“Handler's wry prose keeps even the darkest passages from tipping off balance. The author treats language the way some treat fashion, tooling intentionally jarring or ugly phrases to striking effect.” ―Kansas City Star
“A tale that hovers somewhere between realism and fantasy. Full of sharp (and angry) observations about modern life, We Are Pirates is strange, dark and subversive.” ―Financial Times
“Full of whimsy, adventure and intrigue. There are dastardly grown-ups and children in peril, moments of high camp and utter despair . . . Beneath all the trappings of make-believe and fancy dress, there is a poignant, serious story about a girl's need to find her true self, shackled to her desire to escape from the world--and the irreconcilable, sometimes bloody conflict between those two yearnings . . . The exhilarating sections dealing with this caper are the book's highlights, the prose full of high-blown pirate speak that does little to hide the sincerity of all those on deck.” ―Daily Telegraph (UK)
“This, his fifth novel for adults, retains the whimsy, intrigue and high camp of his children's fiction . . . Silly but poignant. ****” ―Sunday Telegraph (UK)
“Displaying typically impudent imagination, Handler choreographs this quixotic whimsy with a dexterous touch and flashes of wit.” ―Sunday Times (UK)
“Sails against readerly expectation to brilliant effect. Gloriously cut loose from much in the current book market, We Are Pirates is a pirate adventure for grown-ups set in modern-day San Francisco . . . It is a swashbuckling, wonderfully eccentric message in a bottle for those seeking a social order beyond the realm of traditional authority . . . Handler's yarn, replete with as many twists and turns as the classic pirate stories, captivates from start to finish, but it is his stylistic exploration of the piratical yen for elsewhere which most cleverly shanghais the imagination.” ―The Independent on Sunday (UK)
"[Handler’s] latest novel is classic Snicket: escape at any cost . . . [But] something far odder, more chaotic--and distinctly adult--takes over . . . Handler switches timelines, settings and perspectives with the virtuosity of a plate-spinner." ―The Guardian
About the Author
Daniel Handler is the author of the novels The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, Adverbs, and Why We Broke Up. As Lemony Snicket, he is responsible for many books for children, including the thirteen-volume sequence A Series of Unfortunate Events and the four-book series All The Wrong Questions. He is married to the illustrator Lisa Brown, and lives with her and their son in San Francisco.
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Too real to be anything but great.
By Theoden Humphrey
That's it. I'm never reading a sad book again.
I don't know how people do it. How do you all read literary classics and modern mainstream novels, and enjoy them? How do you read them one after another? I mean, John Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors, but how do you go from Of Mice and Men to The Grapes of Wrath without reading, say, The Hobbit in between? I can't do that. I've tried for years, I have a degree in literature, I'm an English teacher, I'm a book reader and reviewer, and an author: I know that there is a certain prestige that attaches to the great novels, and almost every one of them is sad, is tragic. But I just can't do it any more.
I got this book because I loved the Lemony Snickett books, and because I love pirates. Stupid, I know; but why not? The Series of Unfortunate Events (Also sad -- I'm aware that I should have paid more attention to the very obvious clues) was genuinely well written, and pirates are not only fun (But also sad: because the average lifespan for a Caribbean pirate was about two years, before they died of disease, alcoholism, or a "short drop followed by a sudden stop." Like I said: many clues.) but also fascinating, because they represent savagery, and also egalitarianism, among other things. Escape, and rebellion, and a final middle finger to a cruel world.
This book was exactly that. Daniel Handler captured not only the world of the pirate, the anger, the pain, the fight against all conformity and thus against all society and even against humanity itself; he also captured the modern world -- and thus made me long to be the pirate, even while I sorrowed for those following that path, pitied them their rage and their pain. And I raged against those who tried to contain the pirates; and then I felt their pain, as well. Because as Handler points out, with the title and with the entire book: we ARE pirates. We all are. We are.
The book is good, damn good, maybe even brilliant; I just finished it minutes ago and maybe don't have the perspective to really grasp all of its insights and nuances. But I laughed at passages, I recognized people, I loved and hated and felt contempt and pity for the characters and their lives. It's written the way a book should be written, and it's about a great subject -- not only pirates, but also family and children and growing up and careers and ambitions and dreams and, of course, disappointments. It's got a wonderful twist at the end, which changes your understanding of things; more than one, actually. It is multi-layered and complicated, but nonetheless still easy to read, and it has some beautiful flourishes and original creations. This is a very impressive piece of work.
And it's sad. And I'm done.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
“We steal the happiness of others in order to be happy ourselves."
By Ana G.
I have been waiting for this weird and wonderful work to be published for years. Anyone who knows me knows that my favorite book of all time is Daniel Handler’s Adverbs, and while We Are Pirates is entirely different, it’s packed full of all the usual things that make Handler’s work brilliant. Powerful, funny prose that catches you by surprise with its unique ability to frame reality, a collection of believable characters that still somehow verges on the absurd—and, most importantly, an unusual, whimsical premise that gives the reader a view of our world via a lens of the extraordinary.
Troubled by parental oppression and plagued by the urge to plunder, fourteen-year-old Gwen Needle gathers an Alzheimer’s patient, a lovestruck boy, a Haitian nursing home attendant, and her new best friend into a group of pirates—real pirates, attacking and pillaging from their stolen ship in the San Francisco Bay. Meanwhile, her father is struggling to pitch an idea for a radio show, resist the temptation of his young assistant, and, hopefully, get his daughter home safely.
As a longtime fan of Handler’s, I appreciate the subtleties in this novel more than anything else. Handler has this delicious habit of creating inside jokes with the reader by reusing phrases, imagery, and snippets of dialogue, all while hearkening back to traditional pirate lore and dropping in other relevant allusions.
For example, the two teenage girls (those “wenches”) often encourage one another with a hearty “verily” during their exploits. Whenever possible, everyday situations are likened to life on the high seas in unexpected, sometimes ridiculous, but always enlightening ways. The storybook-fueled inspiration for their pirating journey could have been lifted right out of the plot of Don Quixote, complete with senile old man who has a somehow richer perspective on life. And the further you sail into the book, the stronger the parallels become, and the more familiar you feel with the characters, the author, and the story.
Daniel Handler recently stated in an interview: "[F]or the life of me I am mystified by the appeal of novels showing us the Way We Live Now. ... [M]ost of all I am interested in the Way We Don’t Live Now, a book with the essential strangeness of great literature. The strange illuminates the ordinary. But somebody tell me, please, what the ordinary is supposed to illuminate."
This is the key thing about We Are Pirates that I think some initial negative Goodreads reviews are missing. By being strange, We Are Pirates illuminates the ordinary. We don’t need a story about pirates to understand the relationship between an angst-ridden teenage girl and her frustrating parents, but doesn’t that make it so much more fun? Doesn’t it cast the usual family dynamic in a new, exciting light? Doesn’t it teach us, after everything, that perhaps we all have a little bit of the pirate spirit in us? I say “verily.”
There is currently no other book like this one on the market. It has all the intrigue of an old-fashioned pirating tale without being antiquated, the reality of the family life without being supremely dull, the childlike pursuit of adventure without being a kids’ book, and the darkness of a historical drama without being some throwaway thriller. For skeptical Snicket fans—you’re right, it’s not A Series of Unfortunate Events—but I assert that it is so, so much better.
22 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
Not as good as I had hoped
By I Know What You Should Read
I love Daniel Handler/Lemony Snickett, so I was very excited to read this book. And the blurb promises a fun and quirky read. But this was a big disappointment.
Gwen is a pissy (and typical) fourteen-year-old. She fights loudly and frequently with her mom. She gets caught shop-lifting and is forced to volunteer at an old-folks’ home as penance. She has an unrequited crush on a cute boy. She has a mean best friend. Just when things are seeming super tragic for Gwen, she meets a new friend. Together they convince an old guy and an orderly from the home to hit the high seas for adventure, plundering, mayhem . . . and even murder.
The Gwen part of the book is actually pretty good. It is exciting, surprising, silly, and sad. But Gwen’s story is only half of the book. The other half focuses on her dad, Phil, a radio producer in an unhappy marriage who fantasizes about his new assistant and dreams of making a hit radio show about an obscure old musician. Phil is clueless and sad and a big loser. Unlike Gwen, he is not a sympathetic character. At all. I didn’t care a bit about Phil or his misadventures or his bad decisions.
There are moments in this book that have the distinct Handler/Snicket writing style that I love (little witty quirks and funny one-liners), but, in large part, the book is jumbled and messy. It inexplicably starts after the piracy has taken place, which is confusing and serves no purpose. It unsuccessfully jumps from one point-of-view (or place in time) to another rapidly, jerkily, and without context—sometimes mid-paragraph. There were several instances when I had to re-read paragraphs to understand what the hell was going on. There seems to be little change or resolution with the characters. This is a retelling of a ridiculous and horrifying time that should have effected them a great deal . . . but, as it is told, it seems like the events had little bearing on their lives.
In short, this is a book that did not live up to its potential. Sad.
Oh, and one final beef: I don’t think I’m an obtuse reader . . . but I have absolutely no idea who the narrator of this book is supposed to be. There are only a few very random references to him (when he speaks in first person and is attending a BBQ at the Needles’ house). If anyone else has read this book and can help me out with that, I’d greatly appreciate your insight.
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