The Bad Beginning
No. 1 in the A Series of Unfortunate Events series
by Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler
illustrated by Brett Helquist
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HarperCollins (New York): 1999. Hardcover: 167 pages. ISBN-10: 0-06-440766-7 Suggested retail price: $9.95 (US) Tags: fortune; made into movie; marriage; murder; orphans; Youth Tactical strength: [6/10] |
Compare prices on The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket at Book Cost
The Baudelaire children -- Violet, Klaus, and Sunny -- certainly do get off to a bad beginning. Their home burns down, killing their parents. Fortunately, the children's parents left them an enormous fortune. Unfortunately, their next of kin, Count Olaf, wants to do away with the children to get the money for himself. The Count belongs to an acting troop, and he plots to marry fourteen-year-old Violet by casting her in a play with a marriage scene starring a real judge. The children must use their formidable wits to find a way out the Count's plans and in spite of the numerous well-meaning, but dim-witted adults around them.
In The Bad Beginning, Snicket [David Handler] appears to take influences from both Charles Addams and Edward Gorey. Unfortunately for us, Snicket doesn't have the black charm of Gorey and his characters don't revel uninhibited in their situation like the Addams family. Snicket tells a quaint tale in an omnicient mode that starts out interesting but quickly starts to grate as he beats the same jokes to death repeatedly. For example, whenever the infant Sunny makes an utterance, Snicket interprets.
"Gibbo!" Sunny shrieked, which appeared to mean "And I could have lots of things to bite."
This constant narrative commentary starts out interesting, but this and several other stylistic choices quickly grow tedious. Snicket's style doesn't seem to bother younger readers like my 11-year-old son, who read The Bad Beginning in one day, even though he only had to read the first two chapters.
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