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The Basic Eight
The Basic Eight
Author: Daniel Handler
It's first semester senior year, and Flannery Culp needs her friends more than ever. Her homeroom teacher is a tyrant, her biology teacher is a pervert, and in a few months the Winnie Moprah Show will broadcast vicious lies calling her a Satanic murderer when they really mean murderess. Flan needs Kate, even though she gossips incessantly. She n...  more »
ISBN-13: 9780312253738
ISBN-10: 0312253737
Publication Date: 3/2000
Pages: 329
Rating:
  • Currently 3.9/5 Stars.
 10

3.9 stars, based on 10 ratings
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 3
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

althea avatar reviewed The Basic Eight on + 774 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
Ive read a couple of Handlers Lemony Snicket books, and thought they were mildly amusing. Said coworker assured me that this book was much better and she was right!
I would highly recommend Basic Eight for anyone who was a fan of Heathers very similar themes, similar brand of dark humor but updated and more-than-timely.
The book is told through the diary of Flannery Culp, who is re-writing said diary, a year after the significant events, from the confines of an institution. (The reader knows shes guilty look at her name, after all!) The device makes for a very interesting unreliable narrator but the best part of the book isnt Flans tale of her highschool clique and how she wound up becoming infamous, but Handlers deftly pointed satire, as he shows the absurdity of how teachers, authority figures, and the media and self-help gurus (like Winnie Moprah) take problems and run in the completely wrong direction with them, babbling about cults and Satanism instead of actually addressing real problems. It is a funny book, but its also terribly sad in its accuracy.
Should be required highschool reading not only for students but for faculty!
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