The Basic Eight

A satire of teenage life follows cynical soon-to-graduate Flannery Culp on a raucous journey through high school in the 1990s, covering SATs, college applications, friends, boyfriends, tabloid journalism, and TV talk shows. A first novel.

Flannery Culp is 19, precocious, pretentiousAand incarcerated. Accused of Satanism and convicted of murder, she and her seven friends (the "Basic Eight") have been reviled and misunderstood on the Winnie Moprah Show and similar tabloid venues. So Flannery has typed up and annotated the journals of her high school years in order to tell her real story: "Perhaps they'll look at my name under the introduction with disdain, expecting apologies or pleas for pity. I have none here." Handler's sharply observed, mischievous first novel consists of Flannery's diaries from the beginning of her senior year to the Halloween murder of Adam State and its aftermath. The journals detail Flan's life in her clique of upper-middle-class San Francisco school friends, who desperately emulate adulthood by throwing dinner parties and carrying liquor flasks. Kate ("the Queen Bee"), Natasha ("less like a high school student and more like an actress playing a high school student on TV"), Gabriel ("the kindest boy in the world" and in love with Flan) and the rest begin experimenting with the hallucinogen absinthe. Squabbles once easily resolved grow deeper and darker when Natasha poisons the biology teacher who has been tormenting Flan. Should the Basic Eight turn on, and turn in, one of their own? Handler deftly keeps the mood light even as the plot careens forward, and as FlanAnever a reliable narratorAbecomes increasingly unhinged. The links between teen social life, tabloid culture and serious violence have been explored and exploited before, but Handler, and Flannery, know that. If they're not the first to use such material, they may well be the coolest. Handler's confident satire is not only cheeky but packed with downright lovable characters whose youthful misadventures keep the novel neatly balanced between absurdity and poignancy. (Apr.) FYI: The Basic Eight has been optioned for film by Bridget Johnson, producer of the hit film As Good As It Gets. Handler's second novel, Watch Your Mouth, will be published by St. Martin's in winter 2000.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An adult young-adult first novel set in a San Francisco high school. Based on an actual California murder and already optioned by the producer of As Good As It Gets, the story centers on a high school clique, The Basic Eight. Narrating is Flannery Culp (culp as in blameworthy, Flannery as in O'Connor), a gifted senior and editor of the school paper, now flunking calculus, who is transcribing her Journal of a Woman Wronged in order to explain how it is that shes been accused of leading a Satanic cult into murdering a teacher, as well as a fellow student, during a madcap drugfest fueled by absinthe, gin, and rum. Also on hand is Dr. Eleanor Tert, a therapist putting her own obtuse interpretation on the events told by Flan, although Tert is so parodistic that she (and pop psychologist Peter Pusher) may he a figment of Flan's imagination. Flan looks up to Natasha Hyatt as the most self-assured creature in Roewer High School, a girl who does everything with a panache worthy of Cyrano. The other clique members are female except for budding chef Gabriel, a black who falls for Flan. Flan has just returned from a trip to Italy during which she wrote mash letters to Adam State, though, on her return, it seems that Adam will have little to do with her, especially since she's going out with Douglas, who turns out to be gay. When Adam does make a play for Flan, who sees herself as a dumpy virgin, and then drops her, her jealousy leads to Adam's slaying during a weekend drinking party. Did Flan kill Adam? You're not quite sure, up almost until the second murder, whether this is an exercise in schoolgirl ironies or a serious novel. Will high-schoolers love the confusion? Will their parents find themselves befogged by the parodies? Is the author serious? Discuss. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

First novelist Handler has all the teenage issues down patAbelonging, power, loyalty, drugs, and body imageAas he sets about proving just how dangerous high school can be. As Flannery Culp edits her journal of the previous year in prison, we follow Flan and her friends (the Basic Eight) through the fall of their senior year. Adults are generally absent, except for a few teachers who matter. Flan's beautiful friend, Natasha, is worth close attention. Handler's writing is witty and perceptive, especially as schools and society are parodied, and he makes clever use of vocabulary and study questions. But as a brutal murder unfolds and lives are ruined, the "wonderful, wicked fun" promised by the book jacket faded for this reviewer. The novel has been optioned for film, so expect to see it on the screen, a tragedy larger than the Othello Flan's drama club is staging. Recommended with reservations.ARebecca Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.