Why We Broke Up

I recently read the book Why We Broke Up, a fiction written by Daniel Handler and featuring art by Maira Kalman. The novel itself is a story of first love, or perhaps first infatuation is the best way to describe it. Why We Broke up tells the story of Protagonist and geeky old-movie enthusiast Min ("short for Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom" p.18) Green's relationship with high school (American) football jock Ed Slaterton.


Why We Broke Up is a young adult book, and reads like one. I don't usually go for books in this genre (though I loved The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet by Reif Larson) but at the time I wanted something light and this ticked that box. Interestingly, when reading this, there is a sense of incredible hindsight: While I did find it reminiscent of experiences of one's first school boyfriend, what struck me was that although it is written for younger readers, perhaps currently in the throws of their own young romance, there are hints of awareness about the relationship at the centre of the novel that offer an adult retrospective, viewed from an emotional distance that Min couldn't possible have.

There are three things that interested me about the book, forming the motivations for me choosing to read it. Firstly, Why We Broke Up is written as a break up letter from Min to Ed. The letter of course guides the reader through the entirety of their relationship from start to inevitable end. However, this means that it is interesting from a linguistic point of view. In terms of deictics, it is written in first person (the 'I' representing Min) to a story-internal character 'you' (Ed). It also means that the book itself is the (anti-)love letter, and the reader therefore appears to have access to this personal dialogue.

On the left, you can see the opening page. It starts with the epistolary genre salutation, 'Dear Ed'. Typographically, these words are presented as handwriting, thus in academic terms, they are considered to function through discursive import by symbolising the act of hand writing, albeit transposed into the context of a printed book. While the font subsequently returns to a conventional looking typeface, the 'Dear Ed' is presented like this in order to intimate the letter format.


Secondly, Why We Broke Up is multimodal. Each chapter opens with an illustration from artist Maira Kalman. Moreover, the pictures are not mere illustrations. They form part of the narrative world since not only does Min directly comment on them, they are also narrative artefacts, objects that trigger stories in the genesis of Min and Ed's relationship. Indeed, the letter-book itself is supposed to come in a box that Min drops off at Ed's door, together with all these objects of doomed young love. The first image (which opens the second chapter) for instance looks like this:

The image depicts the box in which the letter and associated objects are supposed to arrive. The text, too, directly references it: "The thunk is the box, Ed. This is what I am leaving you" (p.3).

The third reason I chose to read this book was the most persuasive. In marketing Why We Broke Up, the "Why We Broke Up Project" was created.

I first heard about of this through The Guardian's life style pages (see the article I first read here) but it has its own website and is promoted on the back of the novel's dust jacket. The dust jacket states, "Min and Ed's story of HEARTBREAK may remind you of your own" and instead of endorsements about the book, features testimonies by famous authors (such as Neil Gaiman, M. T. Anderson, and Brian Selznick amongst others) about their own experiences of heartache. Similarly, the website says, "That's their break up story - What's Yours?" and invites users to post their own testimonies. As a reader, you can also search the testimonies by categories: "I can't believe how disgusting you were", "I can't believe there was someone else", "I can't believe you did that", "I can't believe you wore that", "I can't believe that's what you thought", "I just can't believe it", and "I'd take you back in a minute".

As such, the book becomes part of a larger dialogue in the form of the Why We Broke Up Project. With confessions that are both funny and tragic by turns, the Why We Broke Up Project offers an intimate yet collective insight into heartbreak, and it is this that I find fascinating.

Why did YOU break up?