All The Dirty Parts is a short, sharp novel about teenage desire from Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket. It charts the inner thoughts—mostly dirty, as the title promises—of a high school boy who is gaining a reputation, or so people warn him. Cole is obsessed with sex and has slept with a number of girls, and described them all to his best friend Alec, but when things with this best friend move in a new direction and then new girl Grisaille takes over his focus, Cole finds out things aren’t as simple as he’d made them out to be.

Handler writes in a distinctive style, giving Cole a clear voice, and the whole novel is written in tiny snippets, like thoughts jumping back and forth. He takes the conversational narration of Holden Caulfield, the frank and explicit content of Bret Easton Ellis, and his own serious handling of young people’s thoughts and realities that will be recognisable to fans of A Series of Unfortunate Events, and creates a brash novel with a main character who seems all too typical. Everything is sketched lightly and the novel’s pace is quick, making it easy to consume in one sitting, and the ending leaves the kind of ambiguity found in teenage life, unsure what will happen next.

All The Dirty Parts is not for everyone. It is blunt, it talks extensively about teenagers having and thinking about sex, and it does with a narrator who is no simple hero. Some readers will find it uncomfortable; others will find Cole too unlikeable, or too honest a teenage boy. However, what Handler recognises is that teenagers will always consume media like this—maybe by discovering cult adult novels with famously explicit content, or through film and TV, or fanfiction, or otherwise. By writing a novel that appeals to both a sense of relatable content and a desire for that which feels shocking or exciting, he is depicting teenagers in a way that could be insightful to both them and adults, whilst also being entertaining.

Phwwwww, this is sure to be a controversial book, this snapshot of a very sex-obsessed teenage boy and his surprising emotional journey over the course of several months. I recommend with caution: it's honest (the title sure delivers in its promise), and I think its honesty will be both its appeal and its repulsion depending on your perspective as a reader.

A very interesting book.. It jumps around a lot but does a very good job of portraying Cole not as a lecherous person but one who can't help his desires and needs and the conflicting emotions he goes through as he tries to find himself. It is a literary take of the dirty thoughts of a teenage male and his constant need for sex and how that effects the world around him. Well worth reading.

Well, this is going to be controversial! Public libraries rush out and get this as soon as it is available, school libraries, I bet this one gets you some interesting comments! I can see the lights flashing and the censors racing to ban this from every library in the land.

Someone here on Goodreads has placed a comment that it should be reviewed by males, and I can see that, after all, we are firmly placed inside the head of a teenage boy who is thinking about sex, having sex, exploring all manner of sex and being generally a sex crazed teenage boy. This isn’t a relationship book and yet it is, this isn’t a helpful guide and yet it is.

I liked almost all of this novel.

I liked that it was short. There was no need to draw this out. Nice job Daniel Handler.

I liked that this teen guy seemed real, no stupid conversations, no helpful parents, just him and his penis and his constant thinking about using it.

I liked the honesty, the judgments that he was putting it about too much, the attitudinal change of his friends and classmates as he embarked on a relationship which excluded all of them.

I loved the way his relationship with his best friend changed as they tried out sex and then tried to figure out where they fitted in the hetro/homo state of the world.

What I didn’t like:
I didn’t love the girl in here, she seemed so one dimensional compared to him. But I get it, it is really all about her – ahem … attributes.

Many people will cringe at this book, but I’m going to buy a copy and hand it to our school counselor because I really liked it and I see it as having a voice that young people might really like, but there will be a bunch of haters and they are gonna hate real strong.

Yep, this is a novel about sex. All of the everythings about sex, from the point of view of a teenage boy and so it is really aptly named.

Thanks Netgalley and the publisher for giving me access to this. It was very enlightening and I won’t be looking a teenage boy in the eye for a couple of days now that I know what is going on behind those eyes.