I’m not sure if this is a review or a fond stroll through literary memories. We’ll see what I end up with when it’s done. Though they’re children’s books, I didn’t start the thirteen-part Lemony Snicket series until high school, and the last book wasn’t published until I was in college. I’ve since reread the entire series multiple times, and I enjoy it just as much now as I did then.
A friend, I remember, had recommended the series to me, so I borrowed The Bad Beginning from an English teacher with plentiful bookshelves. I was struck almost immediately by the sly playfulness of the prose; I quickly realized that Snicket’s habit of conversationally defining words beyond the reading level of his target demographic was more than just utilitarian. I laughed aloud when he cheekily defined a simple word with a harder one, explaining that “faked” meant “feigned,” and when he mentioned the only dish notdescribed as boiled in an unappetizing meal, he helpfully informed us that “blanched” meant “boiled.”
There were other writerly quirks, of course: alliteration, allusions, and anagrams, delightfully non-sequitur analogies, and, as I’ve said before, the fantastic conceit of translating Sunny’s baby talk. I always loved the way Snicket positioned himself as a character adjacent to the narrative, a lugubrious investigator documenting the sad history of the Baudelaire orphans, one constantly beset by shadowy foes and forced to arrange clandestine dead drops with his editor and hide secret messages within his manuscripts. The books are littered with additional comic gems, just because; I adored the random little Easter eggs, like Snicket’s disdain for The Little Engine That Could or the way he sums up the moral of World War I (don’t assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.)
Wonderful absurdist humor aside, any youth series that opens on three kids losing their parents and home in a senseless fire was never going to be merely a barrel of laughs. The books don’t shy away from hard moments, real loss, and impossible choices. Though the Baudelaires find at least one kind adult in each book, I found it terribly sad that they could only really rely on each other. All the grown-ups meant to protect them were too naïve, too trusting, too afraid, too much of a pushover to help when they needed it. (That’s largely why I love The Penultimate Peril, for the chapters with the greatest Denouement.) As the Baudelaires took care of themselves, they wrestled with important questions. If they did ignoble things to thwart wickedness or stay alive, did it mean they were no better than the villians? And I remember sitting on my bed reading The Grim Grotto, tearing up as Snicket compared a great sadness to a fire. He said that, like smoke, your sadness spreads to everything in your life, tainting even happy things with its ashen colors and scents. That one paragraph got to me more than any of the deaths in Harry Potter.
Like I said, I was in college with The Endwas published; the day it came out, I ran out between classes to buy it. My old ritual of reading each book in a single day was no longer viable – I was now insanely busy, and with the way they’d lengthened over the years, The Endwas more than twice as long as The Bad Beginning. Still, I read during every free moment and stayed up later than was strictly prudent, sitting on the floor of my room reading. As ravenous as I was for it, it was one of those books you dread finishing, because you know it’s the last. As I closed the book on Violet, Klaus, and Sunny and The Endmade its parting gift to me, I took comfort in Snicket’s words that stories don’t end when they stop being written. The story goes on, and with this story, it’s nice to think of it living somewhere behind the page.
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