We Are Pirates: A Novel

Take a moody teen arrested for shoplifting, an equally rebellious friend, add a senile former Navy-man, mayhem on the high seas of San Francisco Bay, and a concerned father trying to bring his daughter back home from her life of piracy, and you start to scratch the surface of this book’s plot.

When Phil Needle’s daughter, Gwen, gets arrested for shoplifting, she’s punished by being sent to volunteer at an old folk’s home. But when Gwen and her friend Amber get a crazy idea to run away and become pirates, that’s when her father realizes he needs to step in.

We Are Pirates: A Novel by Daniel Handler is quirky, dark, and hilarious. It tilts the reader at an off-angle, as only the mind behind Lemony Snicket can do, resulting in a mind-bendy pleasure that is addictive, strange, poignant, and heartbreakingly vulnerable.

This reviewer’s first encounter with Daniel Handler felt like being thrown in the deep end of a very cold pool, but the more you learn to swim in his world, the struggle to the surface proves incredibly worthwhile. If this is your first encounter with Handler then you are in for a quirky, incongruous, wild ride.