So I have been recently previewing children’s literature for my son, to figure out what books are appropriate for his age. I picked up the first book from the Lemony Snicket series about the Baudelaire orphans from the library, and then, my curiosity being piqued, plowed through the whole series (the books are a quick read.) After finishing book 13, I am wondering whether these stories are really popular with children. The ending is depressing, most questions are unresolved (what is the deal with the Vessel For Disaccharides?), and the moral, it seems, is that everyone is partly evil, all well-meaning adults are weak and ineffectual, the end does not justify the means, but if you don’t resort to evil to defeat evil, then you are doomed to failure.
It was sort of like talking to a favorite uncle–the kind who, although you’re a kid, he knows you well enough to treat you with respect, like an adult. And he was telling a fabulous story, filled with mystery and mayhem. And it seemed a little more real for all the loose ends it left unsolved; like he was really telling you everything he knew about it, until he ran out of things that he knew about it. As for the moral–well, are those not good life lessons? Except for the “well-meaning adults” one. I agree that that was a flaw in the series.
I don’t know how popular they are now, but at the time the books were new they certainly were popular with children. I was in college then and enjoyed them myself, and I think I’d have liked them if I’d been 10 years younger – although I wouldn’t have gotten all the literary jokes.
They’re not exactly “nice” books, but the reader certainly has ample warning of this, and I don’t think most 9-12 year olds (the target age group for the books) are all that into reading “nice” books anyway. When I was around that age the Babysitter’s Club books were pretty popular with girls, but so were the Christopher Pike and R.L. Stein horror novels. And although A Series of Unfortunate Events is fanciful and exaggerated, sudden tragedies, petty cruelties, and malicious, condescending, or well-meaning-but-ineffective adults are all a part of childhood. I certainly didn’t spend my early days skipping through a meadow singing “tra la la”, and I wouldn’t have been very interested in reading about children who did.
I wouldn’t turn to A Series of Unfortunate Events for moral instruction and I doubt many kids do either, but as far as that goes there are far worse books aimed at adolescent readers. If I had a 12 year old daughter I’d be a lot happier if she adopted Violet Baudelaire as her role model than, say, Bella from the Twilight series.
My kids have liked them. They found them entertaining enough that we own all 13. I personally don’t get them at all. I had to stop at book 3 when the story followed the exact same plot just in a different location as the previous two. Depressing and repetitive isn’t my idea of a good book.
Since a couple of posters have mentioned this, I wanted to say that although the first three books do have almost exactly the same plot (especially 2 and 3), this isn’t true of the entire series. There are definitely recurring patterns, but all 13 books aren’t as similar as Reptile Room and Wide Window.
That said, if you didn’t like the first three you probably wouldn’t like the others any better, especially not since things go from bad to worse for the orphans. After what happens to their first few guardians no one wants to take them in anymore, so the children go through several alternative arrangements such as a boarding school. Their situation gets worse still when they’re falsely accused of a crime and wind up on the run.
As the series progresses one also learns more (although never everything) about several mysteries relating to the lives and deaths of the Baudelaire parents, and why Lemony Snicket feels compelled to tell the orphans’ story. There’s a secret society too, and although I never thought of it this way until just now, by the end the series is almost a children’s version of Foucault’s Pendulum. Anyway, if you read the whole series there’s a lot more going on than just “the orphans have some more bad luck”. But like I said, if you didn’t enjoy the tone of the first few books then the rest of the series probably still wouldn’t be to your taste.
I got the movie on a recommendation from a couple of friends (people who know my tastes), and loved it despite it being a very dark, sinister story that supposedly came from a children’s book.
So I went and read up on the books, thinking I would read those, to see what developed and how it all turned out, because there were so many little mysteries left laying around. When I found out that he didn’t really resolve anything, just kind of stopped writing, and that the kids apparently never catch a real break in the story at all, I thought: my god, this guy really is a filthy sadist of an author; no way he gets any more of my money.
I’m not even keen to check them out of the library now, and I think I’ve only watched the movie once or twice since then. I can’t see a reason to watch it or get involved with the characters, since I already know that everything that happens to them will suck. Forever. Without end.
Who the fuck wants to read that?
I suppose it might have felt differently when they were still being written and published, as you always had that “see what’s over the next hill” motivation going, but now that it’s a done deal? Not for me, I don’t think.
I wouldn’t want to read that, but I have read the actual books and I don’t think your description is fair or accurate. The final book doesn’t resolve everything, but it does resolve some things, including the biggest mystery of the series. While the ultimate fate of the orphans remains unclear, the book does have an actual ending and finishes on a relatively hopeful note. It’s not really a happy ending, but the reader has been explicitly warned in all 13 books that there isn’t going to be a happy ending.
As I said, my initial research into the books turned me off from wanting to read them; it never stifled my curiousity, tho. Your description there is almost the opposite of what I’ve read, but you’re also only person I’ve talked with, as opposed to just reading a review or commentary.
I guess I’ll have to start finding them in the library and just see for myself, like I usually do anyway.
My kids definitely liked the books. However, we didn’t read them, but listened to them as audiobooks. Most were read by Tim Curry (freakin’ amazing!) and a couple by the author (not as good, but not bad). We listened to the books together as I drove them to and from school, also in a dark room just before bedtime, and we really laughed a lot and discussed them and got into them as a family. If the kids had just read the books to themselves, I doubt they’d have liked them as much.
I thought the ending was fair. I would have been mad if he’d tacked on a happy ending after all that had happened. And yet, as Lamia says, there was hope.
Most children’s literature bores me, so I haven’t read any of them. My daughter read them all, but my son skipped most of them. (He’s reading Slaughterhouse Five at the moment as a seventh grader!) I enjoyed the movie in all its exaggerated glory. It was one of the few instances where I can stand Jim Carrey (Liar, Liar being one of the other few).
Now that I know Tim Curry recorded the audiobooks, however, I’m interested again. I loved listening to Jude Law in the movie.
I am an adult, but I have to say, I had the same question. So many things are unresolved at the end of the series. And I don’t demand a hippy-dippy Disney happy ending, but I do like things to be resolved, and it really did feel like he just stopped writing. And I read all of the books.
I’ve been listening to the audio versions and enjoying them quite a bit—they work well in that format. I agree that the narrations by Tim Curry are great, and those by the author I didn’t like at first but they grew on me, and though they weren’t as good overall, he may have actually done better at bringing out the sly humor. Curry’s narration was more professional, a word which here means “sounding like a trained actor with a great voice and not just some ordinary guy.”
Here’s a review published after the first five books came out that does a pretty good job of explaining their appeal.
Really? I don’t remember that. I wish the author would have warned me that the books would not be happy!
Actually I have a question on that:
So the mother of the Baudelaire orphans is the Beatrice to whom Lemony Snicket has been dedicating all the books, and his lost love. Since I got the books from the library, I can’t go back to look without checking them all out again, but didn’t he say in one book that his Beatrice had fallen in love with Count Olaf? Or am I mistaken? Maybe he just said “she was taken away from me by an evil man”, meaning the father of the Baudelaires, calling the father of the Bauderlaires evil because he took Beatrice away from Lemony Snicket? Does anyone remember what I am talking about?
I must say that after Mr. Poe put the kids on a bus to their new destination in The Vile Village, I was ready to grab a gun, track him down and shoot him. Would it kill him for once to check out where he is sending these orphans to?
Arnold, I don’t recall Beatrice being in love with Olaf, but it’s been years since I read the books. You could try reading The Beatrice Letters, but I fear that would only lead to more questions…
As far as I could tell in a short search, there may be two Beatrices! And as far as “taken from me by an evil man” goes, I would think maybe Olaf kidnapped or killed her.
I feel like that was the point, to some extent. This idea that you don’t always know what happened, that not everything gets resolved. Think about how many things in real life come down to “Well, he said this, and she said that…”. How many cold cases there are, how often the police just say “We have no idea”. In stories, we get the luxury of knowing that the author is telling the truth, and that he knows everything. I thought that taking that away was a really interesting moral to the books–that in real life, we don’t have an omniscient narrator.
I can see how people who expected the final book to explain all the mysteries in the series would be disappointed – there are quite a few things left unresolved. But if you go in knowing that not everything is going to be explained then you may like it better.
I’m also thinking that some readers may not have understood the significance of the very end of the aptly titled The End. There’s a major revelation on the last page, but it’s handled subtly. If someone didn’t realize the importance of what is described at the end (ETA: or if they’d had it spoiled for them and thus were unsurprised!) then it would seem like the story just came to a halt there for no real reason.
I’m about to get into some major spoilers here, and although I’m using spoiler boxes I wanted to warn anyone who hasn’t read the entire series that these have to do with the last book.
I don’t have the books on hand either, but I think you are somewhat misremembering. I can think of two explanations for Lemony Snicket’s remarks about his lost love.
I don’t recall any suggestion that Beatrice was in love with Count Olaf, and as we learn in the last book he was interested in another woman anyway. But Count Olaf was almost certainly responsible for Beatrice’s death, thus taking her away from Lemony Snicket in a far more complete and permanent way than her marriage. It’s also indicated in the book that Lemony’s enemies (likely including Count Olaf) put out a story that he had been killed, and that Beatrice believed this. The timeline is unclear, but she may have only become involved with Mr. Baudelaire after Lemony’s supposed death. She definitely believes him to be dead at the time Violet is born. So whoever was responsible for the story that Lemony had died probably also indirectly killed his relationship with Beatrice.
At the end of the last book we do learn thatKit Snicket’s daughter (Lemony’s niece) is named Beatrice in honor of the late Mrs. Baudelaire. The Beatrice Letters contains letters to Lemony from both Beatrices.
