Adverbs (novel)

Novel by Daniel Handler

Adverbs is a 2006 novel by Daniel Handler. It is formatted as a collection of seventeen interconnected narratives from the points of view of different people in various sorts of love. Each of the titles is an adverb suggesting what sort of love the people are dealing with. Some people are "wrongly" in love, others are "briefly" in love, and so on. The book focuses on the ways that people fall in love, instead of focusing on whom they are in love with.

Adverbs is billed as a novel, but is commonly described by critics and journalists as a collection of short stories. Certainly it breaks some of the traditional conventions of the novel genre. The narrative is driven by half truths and intentionally misleading statements. The point of view shifts from story to story, characters reappear in unlikely settings, multiple characters have the same name, and Handler himself frequently makes an appearance, not in the role of the narrator, but apparently as the author himself. While the narratives interlock, they are not sequential; and not all characters who share the same name are in fact the same character even though they may also share certain similar aspects of personality or physical features. The narrator admits as much: "At the end of the novel, it's Joe who's in the taxi, falling in love with Andrea, although it might not be Andrea, or in any case it might not be the same Andrea, as Andrea is a very common name." Handler re uses several names for major characters from earlier works, primarily Watch Your Mouth, including Joe, Steven, and Allison. However, none of the re used names appear to be the same characters from Handler's earlier work.

In "Immediately", a man leaves his girlfriend (Andrea) and falls in love with his homophobic cabdriver. In "Obviously", a teenager (Joe) working at a multiplex takes tickets for Kickass: The Movie while pining for the teenage girl (Lila) working the shift with him. She has a boyfriend (Keith). Joe mentions a friend, Garth, who travels to San Francisco to meet with his girlfriend, Kate. This Kate is Kate Gordon, one of Flannery's friends in The Basic Eight, who is mentioned having a brief relationship with a guy named Garth in that novel. In "Arguably", a British writer (Helena), who is married to a man (David) whose ex is called "Andrea", needs money. In "Particularly", Helena works for Andrea, whom she is jealous of. In "Briefly", a teenager's crush on his sister's boyfriend (Keith) haunts him throughout life. Publishers Weekly gave Adverbs a starred review, praising its "linguistic pyrotechnics" and "blithe poignancy."