copyright 2000
Daniel Handler,
St. Martin's Press. 232 pages of delicious fiction.
Handler describes it as an incest comedy. He's not kidding. And it's good. Incest + freaky Jewish golems + lots of sex + operatic structure and drama = an understandably odd, rare read. Handler knows all about falling in love and sinking slowly out of it.
Wacky, then sensuous, then repulsive, usually all three at once, the text grows and shrinks and builds intensely to the end. Worth reading. Please don't expect it to be anything like A Series of Unfortunate Events, though it's just as good.