Watch Your Mouth

"Watch Your Mouth" is a hodgepodge of Jewish mysticism, opera, murder mystery, farce, black humor and transgressive sex. It's also, by turns, funny, weird, sexy, thrilling and touching. Its writing is smart as a post-doc and it's fairly bursting with energy. Although I'm impressed that Daniel Handler was able to cram all those elements and attributes into just over two hundred pages, I'm not sure that "Watch Your Mouth" is a great book, but it is a funny, breezy, amusing one. The twin structural devices that Handler uses to corral all this wild stuff into a single storyline, an opera complete with orchestration and a the twelve steps of a recovery program, become intrusive after a while, unconventional literary devices that might have show more worked in the second draft but probably should have been left on some editor's floor. Also, while his narrative voice is pitch-perfect and surprisingly consistent, the other characters in "Watch Your Mouth" never achieve much depth. Of course, depth isn't really the point of this sort of literary endeavor. The point is naughty, clever fun, and there's lots of that to be had here. Some of it can be surprisingly writerly, too. Handler artfully uses malapropism and misunderstandings to advance both "Watch Your Mouth's" dialogue and its plot has the knack of making the odd, unexpected metaphor work in his favor, most of the time. He's also got a deeper understanding of the storytelling process than he lets on, but this might be my biggest complaint about this book. By the time it reached its conclusion, I got the impression that Handler was a writer of undeniable literary talent just having some fun. That's fine, I suppose, since "Watch Your Mouth" is, after all, a comedy. Still, I'd curious to see what he could do if he ever decided to get serious. show less

At first, I had mixed feelings about this.
At times, I felt that the over-the-top content was very... collegiate. As in, it reminded me of work that was presented in some of my college writing classes: young people trying to see how far they can push things.
There are also a jarring difference between Part 1 & Part 2, to the point where it almost felt disconnected.

In the end though, and after thought, I decided this book deserved 4 stars. It succeeded where work in the aforementioned writing classes did not. The 'shocking' content is not merely gratuitous (as it seems at first), it functions in the context of creating an ambiguous study of family relations, love, and Jewish mythology. Oh yes, and murder. Magical realism or madness? You show more decide.

Still, I do understand, after reading this, why Handler decided to publish his books for younger readers under a different name.
Recommended for fans of Iain Banks' 'The Wasp Factory.' show less

I finished this a week ago. And then had a baby. So this isn't a stellar review, or probably even an accurate representation of my thoughts on it.

I really enjoy Handler's writing. I like the way he puts sentences together, and I like a lot of his ideas. I like that he arranged this novel as a verbal opera, into acts and scenes and intermissions. I like that it was, in part, a novel of Jewish folklore and the golem myth. But while I don't mind reading about sex (even particularly graphic sex), this novel really goes way too far into the sex, and it distracts from what ought to be the meat of the story. (Ugh. No pun intended. I can't think of the right word, though.)

So, I enjoyed this, but (a) it's not his best work, and is in fact the show more weakest of his adult novels, and (b) it's more about shock value than substance. show less

More incredible writing from Handler, as he takes on golems and Jewish mythos. Great fun and quite weird

What a sassy departure from the kiddie classic series of Unfortunate Events. I liked The Basic Eight a lot, but this one just went too far. Handler was trying to push the envelope a bit too far with Watch Your Mouth. An opera and a novel combined??!? Come ON!!

One of the strangest things that I have ever read. Weird and wonderful, not for the faint of heart, or for anybody looking for much meaning.

Lots of fun, but little depth.