Watch Your Mouth

A golem is a creature made of clay that will rise up and do your bidding. The story of the golem is an old one, and nobody knows whether it's true or not. It's like an old family story in this way, or like the best sex of your life—did it happen the way you remember, or is it all just in your dirty mind?

The summer Joseph lives with his girlfriend Cynthia and her family is something like an opera, and something like a twelve-step program, and Joseph wants very much to find out what's true and what's not. Does Cyn's father want Joseph to sleep with her, or does he want Cyn all to himself? Does Cyn's brother want to seduce his mother, or is this just one of his experiments? And speaking of experiments, what is Mrs. Glass building out of clay, late at night, in the basement? You can't always find out what's true about a family, but Joseph hopes that he can remember it in time. Because something is rising out of the river, and he really wants to know just whose bidding it's going to do.

Tolstoy wrote that happy families are alike and that each unhappy family is unhappy in a different way. With WATCH YOUR MOUTH, Daniel Handler shows us just how different that way can be.