Why We Broke Up Analysis

The where and when of all the action in Why We Broke Up is vague, giving the book a universal quality. The geographical location is never explicitly named, though certain details (like the existenc...

Why We Broke Up shows us the world through the eyes of narrator Min Green, a teenager who's dealing with the fallout from her relationship with one Ed Slaterton. Actually, it shows us the world thr...

Why We Broke Up is a horse of a different color, meaning it can't be easily categorized. You could make a convincing case for calling it a comedy or a tragedy, which means that it's neither—or bo...

Technically, Daniel Handler wrote this novel, but in the world of the story, the author of what we're reading is Min. (Remember: The text is a letter she's writing to Ed.) Breakups bring up a lot o...

Much like the Magnetic Fields, a band he sometimes performs with, Daniel Handler has a sensibility that's a little gothic, but also playful and clever. His specialty is balancing pathos with humor....

The title of Why We Broke Up is pretty self-explanatory. The whole book is Min processing what went wrong between her and her ex-boyfriend, Ed Slaterton—you know, explaining why they broke up. As...

Why We Broke Up ends on a tentatively hopeful note. Finally, Min finishes her letter and seems ready to dump her huge box of Ed memorabilia. It's December, and she and Al are making plans for an el...

Why We Broke Up is an emotionally sophisticated work, but it's easy enough to follow the plot. (A couple meets; they fall in love; they break up. See? Simple.) But the book is written from Min's po...

Total Romantic ApocalypseIf Why We Broke Up were a classic love story, it would begin with boy meets girl. It isn't a classic love story, though, so instead, we sort of start at the end: We know Mi...

Handler didn't have to do any special research for Why We Broke Up. He developed Min's voice by listening to high school girls on the bus and around town. (Source.) The idea for Why We Broke Up was...

So here's the thing: Why We Broke Up is definitely about sex, but it's mostly about love and romance. For Min, sex and love are super related, but for Ed, not so much. This difference in opinion, o...

One of Min's defining traits is her love for old movies. She's constantly referencing plots and actors to help make sense of the world around her. What's most interesting about these shout-outs, th...