Handler’s new novel couldn’t be more unlike the books he wrote under his famous pseudonym. A Series of Unfortunate Events was marked by Handler’s winkingly ornate prose and neo-gothic whimsy; All the Dirty Parts is spare, stripped down and devoid of anything twee. It’s a fascinating, profane book that somehow succeeds on its own merits ... It’s an interesting experiment: The reader is left to connect the dots, to fill in the parts of the story that Cole has elided for not being sufficiently sexual. Handler drops just enough hints for us to do just that, and the portrait that results is quietly heartbreaking, though often hilarious ... It’s difficult to create a fully formed character with the strictures Handler has imposed on himself, narrative fragments from a sex-obsessed high school student. But Cole turns out to be a multifaceted character. It helps that Handler perfectly captures the staccato rhythm of teen-speak; none of the dialogue comes off as inauthentic at all ... Handler doesn’t condescend to his young characters, and he doesn’t offer any easy lessons. All the Dirty Parts is a shockingly original novel...Parents of teenagers might be wary of the language and content, but it deserves to be read widely, and not just by adults — it’s one of the most original and realistic depictions of the sex lives of young people to come around in a long time.
Here, in brief, understated vignettes, Cole sounds like Holden Caulfield writing a sex blog. Amusing yet genuine, lustful yet sensitive, this odd novella approaches teenage horniness seriously and, in the process, touches on important subjects such as sexism, consent, and sexual identity.
Now that the entire catalogue of pornography is accessible on every cellphone and laptop, Handler’s novel isn’t nearly filthy enough. And — major buzzkill — it’s an ironically pious tale ... All his adventures — straight, gay and solitary — are conveyed in the novel’s spindly structure, not so much impressionistic as elliptical. With most of the narrative flesh stripped away, we’re left with just snippets and moments, dialogue and thought freely mixed and undifferentiated ... That his Lotharion ways eventually bring him low is not so surprising — after all, even creeps can get their hearts broken. But what’s strange is that Cole enjoys so little pleasure along the way. Where’s the thrill of sexual passion? The earth-moving excitement? The mind-blowing arousal? For some reason, despite all the sexual mechanics, All the Dirty Parts includes none of the good parts. Handler says he hates all the finger-wagging moralism in most YA lit, but if you’re a certain kind of uptight parent, this may be just the depressing and joyless novel you want your horny son to read. Good luck with that.
Daniel Handler’s novel All The Dirty Parts takes the blunt and constant presence of a male teen’s sexuality and considers it with utmost seriousness. The 17-year-old narrator of Handler’s book, Cole, eschews fleshing out a world for a world of flesh, and the resultant text reads like an object lesson in unbridled teen-on-teen horniness, in all of its joys and consequences … Handler’s book isn’t pornographic. There is the expected and regular onslaught of genitalia, but the book is made up of short fragments — things happen too quickly, and there are no great, immersive accumulations of experience designed to please the everyday reader of erotica … While All the Dirty Parts is the dirtiest of the six novels published under his own name, it’s largely by virtue of excision: What’s not dirty is left out. Here, life is the impediment.
...it’s commendable that Daniel Handler’s newest novel, All the Dirty Parts, is a coming-of-age story that doesn’t shy away from the omnipresence of smut ... A quick read, at just about 130 pages, the book is composed of miniature sections, many just one sentence long, separated by plenty of white space ...message is simple: Go ahead and experiment, but be careful with your heart, and above all, be considerate with the hearts of others ... the book is full of helpful suggestions, and seems most successful if conceived of less as a novel than as a chatty instructional manual for the horny teenage boy...writing is rushed and breathless and very often not good. Sentence fragments and mixed metaphors follow one after the other ...a fascinating and winsome conceit — a coming-of-age narrative composed of the specific parts such narratives routinely omit.
...this interesting experiment by Handler may be the most cleareyed 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 ... It’s a slim volume, more stream-of-consciousness moments than true narration, but Handler has clearly put a lot of thought into what he’s trying to teach here. His prose can be laser-focused...Yet he can still disarm on the fly with surprising humor ... A disarming cautionary tale that’s just naughty enough to be kept from Handler’s Lemony Snicket fans but real enough to spark genuine conversations about sex and its consequences.
The story has a staccato rhythm, divided into short vignettes offering us raw snapshots of a young man’s life ... At first glance, much of the story is formulaic – a teenage boy who falls for a foreign exchange student because she’s not like all the other girls – but Handler deftly sidesteps the reader’s expectations ...the link between Cole’s pervasive, overwhelming obsession with sex and his consumption of pornography is clear. ...familiar tropes readily employed and certain passages that made me uneasy, but there is also much to savour, not least Handler’s clear-sighted exploration of gender politics and the fluidity of sexual identity ...All The Dirty Parts is a thought-provoking read.
In this unflinching coming-of-age tale, gone is childhood innocence: the kids are all grown and obsessed with sex and porn … There is a profound sincerity in these passages; Handler is evidently concerned by the hyper-sexualised world inhabited by today’s youth. There is humour too, the laugh and the cringe typically hand in hand.