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A review by _duskicreads
The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler
5.0
THIS BOOK GUYS! THIS BOOK!
Flannery Culp is editing her journal two years after the events described, telling her side of the story of what came to be known as the Satanic murder of a classmate by the Basic Eight.
The book starts out slow and it takes a while to warm up to it - but bear with it, it will be worth it.
Just the fact that she is telling her story and quite literally editing her journal is a clear indicator of how unreliable of a narrator she will be - but she still manages to blindside you a fair few times. Going through this book, one of my favorite things was to just try to figure out what really happened and what she made up - and I'm still not sure - for example: there is a conversation she had with Adam, followed by a conversation with Gabriel, in which she verbatim repeats Adam's words - but did that conversation really happen? Would it have worked, with the same phrasing? Or is she changing it as she writes her journal?
Truthfully, I enjoyed everything about this book - her snarky and clever way of writing, the pretentiousness of the Basic Eight, a bunch of high school students who wear pearls and throw dinner parties, the way literary plot devices were being called out by Flan as she used them (like foreshadowing), the way she gives away spoilers ahead of time (like, who it was that died), the way chapters were structured like text-book chapters complete with a vocabulary section and discussion questions which actually further the plot.
And the ending! Holy mother of God! I'm not even going to say anything about it, if you've read it, you know what I'm taking about. And if you haven't - well, what are you waiting for?
Flannery Culp is editing her journal two years after the events described, telling her side of the story of what came to be known as the Satanic murder of a classmate by the Basic Eight.
The book starts out slow and it takes a while to warm up to it - but bear with it, it will be worth it.
Just the fact that she is telling her story and quite literally editing her journal is a clear indicator of how unreliable of a narrator she will be - but she still manages to blindside you a fair few times. Going through this book, one of my favorite things was to just try to figure out what really happened and what she made up - and I'm still not sure - for example: there is a conversation she had with Adam, followed by a conversation with Gabriel, in which she verbatim repeats Adam's words - but did that conversation really happen? Would it have worked, with the same phrasing? Or is she changing it as she writes her journal?
Truthfully, I enjoyed everything about this book - her snarky and clever way of writing, the pretentiousness of the Basic Eight, a bunch of high school students who wear pearls and throw dinner parties, the way literary plot devices were being called out by Flan as she used them (like foreshadowing), the way she gives away spoilers ahead of time (like, who it was that died), the way chapters were structured like text-book chapters complete with a vocabulary section and discussion questions which actually further the plot.
And the ending! Holy mother of God! I'm not even going to say anything about it, if you've read it, you know what I'm taking about. And if you haven't - well, what are you waiting for?