All the Dirty Parts: a novel - Hardcover

Handler, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1632868040 ISBN 13: 9781632868046

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2017

Synopsis

From bestselling, award-winning author Daniel Handler, a gutsy, exciting novel that looks honestly at the erotic impulses of an all-too-typical young man.

Cole is a boy in high school. He runs cross country, he sketches, he jokes around with friends. But none of this quite matters next to the allure of sex. "Let me put it this way," he says. "Draw a number line, with zero is you never think about sex and ten is, it's all you think about, and while you are drawing the line, I am thinking about sex."

Cole fantasizes about whomever he's looking at. He consumes and shares pornography. And he sleeps with a lot of girls, which is beginning to earn him a not-quite-savory reputation around school. This leaves him adrift with only his best friend for company, and then something startling starts to happen between them that might be what he's been after all this time-and then he meets Grisaille.

All The Dirty Parts is an unblinking take on teenage desire in a culture of unrelenting explicitness and shunted communication, where sex feels like love, but no one knows what love feels like. With short chapters in the style of Jenny Offill or Mary Robison, Daniel Handler gives us a tender, brutal, funny, intoxicating portrait of an age when the lens of sex tilts the world. "There are love stories galore," Cole tells us, "This isn't that. The story I'm typing is all the dirty parts."

About this title

Review:

It's been a while since I read something that left me muttering 'Oh my God' every few pages ... There is much to savour, not least Handler's clear-sighted exploration of gender politics and the fluidity of sexual identity. Tender and troubling, authentic and intimate, All the Dirty Parts is a thought-provoking read (Guardian)

Cole is a horny teenage boy who spends his time seducing girls and watching porn. Handler, who is perhaps better known as Lemony Snicket, gives hero more depth when Cole meets his match in the exotic, experienced Grisaille, and starts to experience feelings other than lust (Independent)

Unflinching coming-of-age tale. snappy vignettes, at times graphic and blunt, at others tender and quiet. There is a profound sincerity in these passages (Financial Times)

Commendable . . . A coming-of-age story that doesn't shy away from the omnipresence of smut. (New York Times Book Review)

The language is what's sensuous here, and Handler often dips his toe into Joyce--never a full descent into the Irishman's decadence, but the two are kinsmen in how fast their prose moves, at the speed of rushing blood. (San Francisco Chronicle)

A fascinating, profane book . . . 'All the Dirty Parts' is a shockingly original novel--readers might be reminded of Philip Roth's famously raunchy 'Portnoy's Complaint' . . . It deserves to be read widely, and not just by adults--it's one of the most realistic depictions of the sex lives of young people to come around in a long time. (Los Angeles Times)

An irreverent, intimate glimpse inside adolescent desire, sexual identity, and emotional discovery. (Buzzfeed, "Exciting New Books You Need to Read This Fall")

This interesting experiment by Handler may be the most clear-eyed and honest portrayal of the sexuality of adolescent boys in recent memory--it's raw, authentic, fitfully funny, and tragic all at the same time . . . A disarming cautionary tale. (starred review Kirkus Reviews)

Handler continues his recent endeavor to boldly straddle the divide between teen and adult books . . . Cole sounds like Holden Caulfield writing a sex blog. Amusing yet genuine, lustful yet sensitive, [All the Dirty Parts] approaches teenage horniness seriously and, in the process, touches on important subjects such as sexism, consent, and sexual identity. (Booklist)

[A] millennial Portnoy's Complaint . . . [Handler] wisely holds nothing back . . . Its unabashedly graphic language will keep this novel off of the young adult shelves, but it is exactly that readership who might benefit most from its surprisingly subtle exploration of sexual ethics. (Library Journal)

Book Description:

From bestselling, award-winning author Daniel Handler, a gutsy, exciting novel that looks honestly at the erotic impulses of an all-too-typical young man.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1632868040
• ISBN 13: 9781632868046
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144