I did not read A Series of Unfortunate Events when they first came out. I was a little too old, and I heard of them when the Jim Carey movie came out, but didn’t really get interested in it. It wasn’t until the Netflix Series came out and it hooked the imagination of my son that the Series really revealed itself to me. Once my son devoured all of the episodes of the tv show, he has moved on to voraciously reading the series. I’m having a hard time matching his pace, but figured I’d start to try and catch up.
For those unfamiliar with the series, the book follows the Baudelaire Orphans, a group of three children who are orphaned when their parents die in a house fire that consumes all of their belongings. As the title implies, things start off very bad indeed, and continue to get worse. The narrator of their story is Lemony Snicket, and he has a dry matter of fact demeanor. He often breaks the story to talk directly to the reader: both to remind them that they should not expect a happy ending, only heartbreak, and to help define words. I don’t know that I would have appreciated this format without having seen snippets of the TV series. I now hear the entire book narrated by Patrick Warburton, which I think really improves it. The plot points of the first book are fairly basic, and a good bit of the time is spent introducing you to the characters of the book. The book is meant to be absurdist, the main antagonist Count Olaf is cartoonishly evil, with a cabal of other ne’re-do-wells at his side. The book requires a suspension of disbelief and Count Olaf is able to get away with a lot of awful things due to the well meaning ignorance of other adults in the story. So far I found it to be a fun quick read, and it had me interested in reading more.
