Adverbs - Short Stories?

[Hermes]

I just saw Adverbs on sale in my local bookshop as part of a promotion for short stories. I had always thought of it as a novel myself, though a rather odd one. What do others think?

[Dante]

The American edition subtitles it "A Novel," but I had always thought of it as a collection of interlinked short stories. Since they're all strictly speaking part of a wider story, I think the novel categorisation is valid, but each story is quite indisputably a short story in itself. I think you can have both.

[Hermes]

Two other things about Adverbs.

First, has anyone noticed that (like TBL) it has a chiastic structure - that is, the last chapter echoes the first, the penultimate one echoes the second, and so on? The most obvious pairings are 'Immediately' and 'Judgmentally' (Andrea, and someone falling in love in a taxi), 'Particularly' and 'Not Particularly' (the saga of Helena and David), 'Soundly' and 'Wrongly' (Allison, who in the second recalls her life with Lila as recounted in the first), and 'Frigidly' and 'Naturally' (two versions of the same scene - the couple in the back in the first are Hank and Eddie from the second). But I think it should be possible to find links with the others too.

Second, I've seen quotes from a version of the back copy which includes references to the multiple Joes and Andreas and so on: my edition doesn't have this. Does anyone have access to the complete text?

[Dante]

One of the reasons why I've always wanted to make a chart of the story, aligning everything up, even sorting everything chronologically, but I've never quite gotten around to it.

Regarding point two, I think that may, again, have been on the American edition. I'll look it up on Amazon, and see - well, here's the paperback version:

And the hardcover - no, the hardcover flip versions I can find are just admiring quotes. There was a great bit somewhere, though - maybe the inside dustjacket flap? Ah, that's right, but that's on the U.K. inside flap as well, and it's brilliant, and it may be what you're referring to, and I don't have time to transcribe it just now, but I'll return and add it in later, leaving the book here on my desk to remind me.

Edit:

Hello. I am Daniel Handler, the author of this book. Did you know that authors often write the summaries of their books that appear here on the dust jacket? You might want to think of that the next time you read something like, "A dazzling page-turner, this novel shows an internationally acclaimed storyteller at the height of his astonishing powers."

Adverbs is a novel about love - a bunch of different people, in and out of different kinds of love. At the start of the novel, Andrea is in love with David - or maybe it's Joe - who instead falls in love with Peter in a taxi. 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, and in any case it might not be the same Andrea, as Andrea is a very common name. So is Allison, who is married to Adrian in the middle of the novel, although in the middle of the ocean she considers a fling with Keith and also with Steve, whom she meets in an automobile, unless it's not the same Allison who meets the Snow Queen in a casino, or the same Steve who meets Eddie in the middle of the forest. It might sound confusing, but that's love, and as the author - me - says, "it is not the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done."

A dazzling page-turner, this novel shows an internationally acclaimed storyteller at the height of his astonishing powers.

[Hermes]

Thanks, Dante. What I have is the UK paperback, and the back copy there begins and ends the same as the one you quote ('A dazzling page-turner', etc.), but the middle is different and much duller.

[Hermes]

I realise that I must have been unconsciously relying on some version of this, because I assumed that the cab-driver in 'Judgmentally' was Andrea - but in fact it doesn't say so anywhere in the book. It's true that in an earlier episode David says Andrea is now driving a cab, but we also hear that (the otherwise unknown) Carla Louise drives a cab, and even Sam thinks of doing so (although in 'Barely' we are told that is the only story Sam is in). So it could be anyone.