A Series of Unfortunate Events #1 – The Bad Beginning – Lemony Snicket and Brett Helquist – 1999
The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Lemony Snicket should be purchased and perused by audiences of all ages: that is to say, despite the gruesome awful and terrible events befalling the hapless children in this story, it was a completely charming, dry heavingly funny, oddly sad and amazingly disturbing tale.
I cheated on reading this book in that we acquired it on audio tape to calm the family as we made a six hour trek with an eight and nine year old in tow. To my chagrin, not only did the children remain quiet, but the adults were riveted to the tale as well. A year later with only adults traveling in the car, it was still a hit.
The power of this tale is generated by the strong writing and unique literary devices employed by the author Lemony Snicket (a.k.a Daniel Handler) and Brett Helquist. The fictional tale recounts the lives of the Baudelaire children: Violet, Klaus and Sunny. The children are orphaned after an unfortunate fire claims the lives of their wealthy parents and their home. After staying with the manager of the family estate temporarily, the children are shipped off to live with a distant relative. Just when their luck seems to be looking up, it comes crashing down around them. The relative the children are sent to live with is a less than blissful individual. Blissful here meant to insinuate that he, being Count Olaf, was a repulsive, repugnant, dreadful man who was despicable in every sense if ever the word had applied to a human.
Throughout, the writing for The Bad Beginning is witty, precise and comical and oddly dark. The writing is so tremendous that adults with no children around will find themselves captured by the language, the story and the situations the children find themselves in. I believe the writing is so good that it overcomes the fact that nothing ever really seems to go right for the children and at its core, the story really is tragic and dark.
As previously stated, the orphaned children are sent to live with Count Olaf who treats the children terribly. In addition to plotting for their fortune, Count Olaf and his friends are not very fond of children and go to great lengths to make life uncomfortable and miserable for the children. At every turn as things seem to get brighter for the children, misfortune seems to magically appear to place yet another road block to happiness.
Throughout, the children rely on themselves to avoid catastrophe. Klaus at the tender age of 12, proves extremely bright and is able to keep the kids one step ahead of the man made traps placed before the children. Violet, who is 14, is the ranging thinker and tinkerer whose inventions and analytical mind serve to both escape and ensnare the children. Sunny, the baby, is simply an intuitive baby unable to do anything but incite laughter: loved her.
I’ve heard some rubbish masquerading as criticism bantered about labeling the tale formulaic and repetitive, however, for my first brush with the series I simply say bravo: here bravo means tremendous, wonderful and ppppllllgggghhhhhhh to all the naysayers.
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