Watch Your Mouth

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Watch Your Mouth
First edition cover
Author Daniel Handler
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Novel
Publisher Thomas Dunne Books
Publication date July 2000
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 272 p. (hardback edition)
ISBN ISBN 0-312-20940-1 (hardback edition)

Watch Your Mouth is a novel by Daniel Handler about Joseph, a young student staying at the home of his girlfriend, Cynthia Glass, one summer. He has described it as an "opera in book form".

[edit] Plot

The first part of the novel is laid out as an opera, with act and scene numbers as chapter titles and each of the characters being assigned a singing voice. Joseph quickly begins to suspect that Cynthia's entire family is engaging in incestuous behaviour, and that her mother, Mimi, is building a golem in the basement. The first part of the novel ends (operatically) in death. The second part is presented somewhat more conventionally, as Joseph attempts to recover from the events of the first part; this half of the book follows the form of a 12-step program.