Mother Jones
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Mark Murrmann
THE NOVELIST DANIEL HANDLER is bobbing ahead of me in the cold bay water at San Francisco’s Aquatic Park. His head, swathed in a red cap, resembles a maraschino cherry, and I struggle to keep up as the current presses me back toward land. “They told me to wear a swim cap so I wouldn’t be mistaken for a seal,” he explains. “So I was always wearing it, but then I wondered, ‘What happens if I get mistaken for a seal? What then?'”
The “Balclutha” docked in Aquatic Park Maddie Oatman
Handler, 44, is best known for his Lemony Snicket kids’ books, but his latest novel, the gruesome and delightful We Are Pirates, isn’t so child-friendly. We’d arranged to meet here at the Dolphin Club, where he swims three or four mornings a week in the presence of historic tall ships such as the mighty Balclutha. Swimming makes him feel free, he says. It lets him shake off his celebrity and escape urban life for a bit.
Gwen, Handler’s 14-year-old protagonist, also yearns to slip away. She’s an awkward kid from SF’s hypersafe Embarcadero neighborhood, grounded for pilfering makeup and a porn mag from the drugstore. Aided by her friends and a demented old man spewing pirate lore, she steals a boat and sets out for high adventure on the bay. As the dazzle of piracy darkens, Gwen’s father, a dweebish radio producer, tries to bring her back to safety. Without skimping on talking parrots, Handler’s novel touches on the nature of modern surveillance and the forces that compel us to reckless acts.
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