"Set in San Francisco during the Big Bang of tech, this taut novel sees two marriages form and mutate under the influence of greed, secrets, and income inequality. With this dark, timely comedy, Handler continues to prove himself a writer of prodigious gifts." - Esquire, "Most Anticipated Books of the Year"
"Handler has filled his novel with ritzy elite, lustful teenagers, drug addicts, and creatures of the forest awaiting the release that comes with the night. His wit is dry and offbeat adding realism to the story and showing the breadth of his unique abilities." - The Advocate, The Best Thriller & Fantasy Novels We Read in 2019
"The shadow of this fox looms throughout the book, prowling through the city and seducing and consuming the lives of Handler’s characters. This sense of the inhuman and predatory . . . serves as the backdrop of the novel: a rapidly changing San Francisco that, to some, feels like it is eating its own." - San Francisco Chronicle
"Handler spices up the tech-novel’s conventions with a bit of fantasy." - Washington Post
"A clever cocktail of people, places and plotlines that swill around in your soul." - San Jose Mercury News
"Delightfully and caustically wise." - San Francisco Magazine
"Oh lucky you to have Bottle Grove in your hands! What a funny, riveting, heartbreaking, wise and joyous read you have ahead of you! A masterpiece by Daniel Handler, one of our greatest storytellers. How I envy you." - Andrew Sean Greer, author of LESS, Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize
"This witty book is, like San Francisco itself, simultaneously glossy and grimy, hi-tech and low-life. Daniel Handler is one of the quickest minds around, and he is clearly having a grand time here, taking the reader down a drunken path that is both dreamy and as fast-paced as a screwball comedy." - Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of MODERN LOVERS and THE VACATIONERS
"Bottle Grove is a cozy bar, a haunted forest, and a spellbinding new novel by a master of contemporary fiction. With his sly sense of humor and surpassing wisdom about the wildness that exists just below the surface of our lives, Daniel Handler has created an entrancing and very modern story that doubles as a folklore for our time. It’s one of those rare novels that you really don’t want to end, and you’re in luck, because you can read it again." - Tom Drury, author of PACIFIC
"A timely satire of love, wealth and the meaning of home . . . A hilarious yet bittersweet love letter to San Francisco." - Shelf Awareness
"A hilarious tale about unlikely couples set during the San Francisco dot-com explosion. . . . Handler cleverly exposes the sinister sides of his protagonists as they clamor for what they think they deserve. Readers expecting Handler’s trademark humor and bite won’t be disappointed." - Publishers Weekly
"A drunkenly humorous blend of alcohol, entrepreneurial ambitions, and a dash of cheating . . . [Handler's] quickwitted, timely characters and offbeat but perceptive one-liners make for an intoxicating delight. . . . Funny, irreverent, and clever." - Booklist
"This darkly funny novel is guaranteed to pull readers deeply in." - Manhattan Book Review
"Bottle Grove is by turns chilling and hilarious, even as it has the ring of truth… Handler is a natural at crafting the supernatural frisson. He knows the perfect literary hand-waves needed to suggest the monstrous aspects of the nicest so-called men, and the menace implicit on the most ordinary gestures. The dark wit behind the Lemony Snicket novels finds an excellent palette in the contemporary horror tale." - Narrative Species
"Superb, written with an unflinching eye for comedy and horror." - New York Times Book Review on WE ARE PIRATES
"This impossible-to-put-down novel is a dare. Step in, be swept away." - The Agony Column, NPR, on ALL THE DIRTY PARTS
"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 on ALL THE DIRTY PARTS
"An irreverent, intimate glimpse inside adolescent desire, sexual identity, and emotional discovery." - Buzzfeed, "Exciting New Books You Need to Read This Fall" on ALL THE DIRTY PARTS
"[A] dark and whimsical novel . . . Yes, we are pirates, but we’re chained on barren land. Has that theme ever been explored in such a weird mixture of impish wit and tender sympathy?" - Washington Post on WE ARE PIRATES
"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 on ALL THE DIRTY PARTS
2019-07-28
Consumed by their baser natures, two San Francisco couples struggle to find happiness within the confines of marriage and immense wealth.
Martin Icke, a down-on-his-luck barman, mixes bespoke cocktails at the wedding of Rachel, an anxious socialite about to marry Ben Nickels, a kindly tech underling. Midswizzle, Martin falls for Padgett, a poor-little-rich-girl with an ill-concealed substance abuse problem moonlighting as a waitress. The wedding is disrupted by the trickster wiles of Reynard, a hedonistic spirit that haunts the would-be monogamists of the book, reminding them of their animalistic desires. Affairs, animal experiments, potential kidnappings, and thefts ensue. In particular, Padgett and Martin concoct a scheme to put Padgett in the way of the Vic, a tech scion à la Zuckerberg and Jobs who has invented software that tracks your every move and stores it in "the Trail." If only Padgett can capture the Vic's interest, perhaps she can redistribute the immense wealth of Silicon Valley back into the pockets of a man like Martin. Handler (All the Dirty Parts, 2017, etc.) draws on fables like "Reynard the Fox" to comment on the inhumanity of his characters and tips his hat to noir films like Rebecca to pluck at the threads of the marriage plot. Instead of giving readers new ways to think about marriage or cruelty, however, these literary allusions only muddy the waters in a novel overly interested in solipsistic caricature and jagged, cynical pronouncements. Marriage is both a "big con" and "a civilizing influence." Gentrification is the "prowling," beastly instinct of the tech bro. Characters quip endlessly, repeating the same tiresome steps in Handler's wordplay shuffles. "You're icky, Icke," Padgett tells Martin at some point. Reynard's appearance is "not ghastly, just ghostly." A drunkard watches a bar "shimmer as if in a breezy breeze." While the brutal inhumanities of startup culture are ripe for satire and criticism, this novel fails to deliver even a glancing blow.
A clunky, garbled novel about marriage, greed, and deception in Silicon Valley at the height of the tech boom.
