Kay's Bookshelf

This is a children’s book, which means that most characters are quite nice (and no one is actually evil). I for one have very much liked Charlotte, mostly because she seemed to me quite smart to figure it all out, and also because she was quite a proper young lady (that’s the adult in me speaking). I bet I would have liked Clare very much too (although from what Emily said of Clare she was a bit too proper for me to like), however unfortunately the author has chosen to follow Charlotte everywhere she went, so the reader had no chance to know Clare first hand. Other interesting characters were Emily (who was a wee bit too spoiled for me to actually like) and Miss Agnes Chisel Brown (the daughter of the family where Emily and Charlotte lived for a while), a young woman I couldn’t help feeling rather sorry for because she led a seemingly dreary life, the only highlight being her memories of her dead brother Arthur.

A part that I have found most interesting was the one regarding the idea of identity. Lost in a time not her own, Charlotte tries hard to hold onto her idea of self, her knowledge of being Charlotte not Clare. Also, she is always very interested in the way people around them reacted to Charlotte becoming Clare and Clare becoming Charlotte, because one would expect that anyone knowing one of them would realize that something was wrong the very moment the switch happened. And yet it seems like no one ever suspects the change, at least not at first, a thing that confuses Charlotte quite a bit. This reminded me in a way of a book I read a while ago (I think it was Terry Pratchett’s) stating that people only see what they expect to be seeing, and they sort of imagine away the rest — precisely what happened in this circumstance, with people who expected to see Clare seeing Clare, and people expecting to see Charlotte seeing Charlotte. Speaking of which, I am quite curious actually about how much different were they exactly (from the physical point of view), too bad we are never told (although people who knew them both usually said they were very different, but only after a while).

Two quotes I liked:

“And, she thought, uncomfortably, what would happen if people did not recognize you? Would you know who you were yourself? If tomorrow they started to call her Vanessa or Janet or Elizabeth, would she know how to be, how to feel, like Charlotte? Were you some particular person only because people recognized you as that”

and

“But when she put her fingers into the water and pulled a marble out, it was small by comparison with those still in the glass, and unimportant, too. It was like the difference between what you long for and what you find–the difference, for instance, between Arthur’s image of war and his experience of it.”

Thoughts on the ending: The ending was just as nice as was fitting for such a book and partially predictable too. show spoiler

Also, I was very sad to discover that what I have read is a “revised edition” and it lacks a scene (nothing very important, according to Wikipedia, (show spoiler

What I liked most: I absolutely adore the title :)

The idea of having the two characters try to communicate with one another was also quite cool (too bad it wasn’t expanded on a little).

What I liked least: Too short and a bit too vague? I very much liked this book but I would have loved it to have a bit more “flesh”, to tell us about the experience from other people’s point of view too (Clare’s is the one I was more curious about, since she went into the future not the past).

Recommend it to? Anyone enjoying children’s books. This is a very light volume (I read it in one sitting) but quite enjoyable (albeit I for one would have like a bit more detail hehe).


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It seems that, when writing this book, the author was somewhat captivated by the idea of cycle. First of all there are endless descriptions of the water cycle (usually meant to be so boring as to scare readers away from the miserable content of the book). Then, at one point, the cycle of the relationship between Olaf and the three children is mentioned, namely he wants to do them harm, but whenever the Baudelaires are in his clutches they manage to escape and the cycle starts again. My favorite cycle though was the one at the end of the book (although it was a bit soon for me since this is only book 11): somewhere near the end the children end up talking with Mr. Poe on the Briny Beach — the same beach where the same Mr. Poe told them about the deaths of their parents all those books ago. The circle thus came to a close, and presumably a new one has started. Details? In the next book :)

You know, each time I open one of these books I am somehow reminded by the Harry Potter series. Not that there is anything remotely similar regarding the plot, but in the way the series were conceived: the first few books were tame and almost standalone, with a plot spanning exactly one book — however the closer we get to the ending the books became more complicated, more things are at stake and the more complicated it gets to tie up the threads at the end. This particular volume is no exception, and it’s probably the most complicated one yet (without being too complicated for his child readers, of course).

For example, this is the first book where we meet ambivalent characters: usually we knew almost as soon as we set eyes on a new character whether he or she is on the Baudelaire’s side or not. Here we meet “volatile” characters (as the author calls them), characters that aren’t simply good or bad, but a mix or the two. One of the notorious examples is one of Olaf’s henchmen, and I loved the way that particular character, whom we have known for quite a long while now (ever since the first book), turned out to have a side one wouldn’t have thought of before. In his own words, “People aren’t either wicked or noble,” [he] said. “They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”.

Another one of the changes in the series is Count Olaf himself. Now the boyfriend of a very a la mode Esme, and the co-adoptive parent of Carmelita Spats (aka the “tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian” of the book), he somehow loses his villainy edge, starting to border on ridiculous at times. The fact that Carmelita ridicules him and calls him County, and his all new laughter (“Hee hee terry cloth!”, “Ha ha handiwork!”, “Ha ha hedgehog”, “Tee hee tonsillectomy!”) make him a less impressive character than before. Gone are the days when he tried a daring disguise, trying to snatch the kids under the very eyes of their legal guardians. While he isn’t less evil, he ended up more like a caricature of his former self than anything else.

It is worth noting how, with each book, the Snicket family enters the scene more and more. We now find out there were three siblings (Kit, Jacques, and “the one with the marmosets”, as it seems Lemony avoids mentioning his own name — although there is no doubt he is the marmoset guy, especially as he has previously stated something about owning a pet marmoset: “Having a personal philosophy is like having a pet marmoset, because it may be very attractive when you acquire it, but there may be situations when it will not come in handy at all.“). While we know the whereabouts of Jacques (or do we, since his initials keep appearing on letters?), and we get to have a short meeting with Kit, Lemony is the only one whose involvement in the story (other than recording it, of course) is not yet clear. This is one of the things I am most curious about in the next two books: will Lemony ever reveal himself as a full fledged character? Will he ever actually help the children and participate in Olaf’s downfall? I’m looking forward to finding out.

The title also has a double meaning, like the one in the previous book did: a literal meaning, an actual grotto (as there previously was an actual slippery slope) and a more philosophical one, best explained by Captain Widdershins: “There was a philosopher who said that all of life is just shadows. He said that people were just sitting in a cave, watching shadows on the cave wall. Aye – shadows of something much bigger and grander than themselves.“. Another image of the situation the Baudelaires find themselves in, a grim grotto of malevolent shadows that hide secrets yet unknown to the three kids.

And, of course, I couldn’t end this review without mentioning the author’s warning at the very beginning:

“Of course, it is boring to read about boring things, but it is better to read something that makes you yawn with boredom than something that will make you weep uncontrollably, pound your fists against the floor, and leave tearstains all over your pillowcase, sheets, and boomerang collection.”

What I liked most: Despite the fact that this is a series of children’s books, there are times when I actually end up learning something new. For example, in this one I have found out the literal sense of “shiver me timbers” (“It is an expression of extreme amazement, used in circumstances when one feels as if one’s very bones, or timbers, are shivering.“) and what a Hobson’s choice is.

What I liked least: Captain Widdershins’ manner of talking. He speaks in rapid short exclamations separated by “aye!”s. Try as I might I couldn’t picture someone speaking like this: “Aye! For the sugar bowl! Aye! For justice! Aye! And liberty! Aye! For an opportunity to make the world quiet! Aye! And safe! Aye! And we may only have until Thursday! Aye! We’re in terrible danger! Aye! So get to work!”. It got tiring really fast, especially as at times some of the sentences didn’t make any sense. Not to mention that, to my chagrin, at one time the Captain leaves his ship and Fiona remains to take his place and adopts more or less the same manner of speaking!

Recommend it to? Completely unsurprising, I recommend this to anyone who read and liked the rest of the series. I really don’t think it works as a standalone book since it heavily references the previous volumes, but if you do know the world involved by all means jump in, as this may be one of the best books the series has (or at least it’s one of my favorites, aye).

This book is a sequel to:
The Bad Beginning
The Reptile Room
The Wide Window
The Miserable Mill
The Austere Academy
The Ersatz Elevator
The Vile Village
The Hostile Hospital
The Carnivorous Carnival
The Slippery Slope

This book is followed by:
The Penultimate Peril
The End

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Character-wise this is quite an interesting book, as the by now well-known main characters are joined by others, some we’ve already met and others that are brand new. My favorite part continued to be though the fact that Sunny is growing up, a source of continuous development for her character (unlike her two brothers that, although nice kids that I enjoy reading about, have had no new facets revealed in quite a while). She’s now, as the author puts it (albeit exaggerating a little), “a young girl”, and very proud of it. She is still not talking in complete sentences (with some exceptions), but she is also slowly revealing what is (probably) to be her own talent: while Violet is good at inventing things and Klaus’ favorite pastime is reading, Sunny is a natural when it comes to cooking, and, to be honest, I am very curious to discover the ways this particular skill will come in handy in the next books.

This has got to be one of my favorite titles in the series, because, in addition to the “same-letterness” that can be found in almost all of the names the author chooses for everything he needs to choose a name from, this particular title also has a double meaning. One, the most obvious, refers to the slippery slope that the waterfall has turned into because of the cold, that connects the top of the mountain with a lower level and that will play an important part in the book. The second, the less literal one, uses the figurative meaning of a slippery slope, that of a logical fallacy that ignores the existence of a middle ground between two possibilities, which, more or less, is what happens at one point in the book, as there are two expressions that are mentioned more often: “the world is quiet here” (implying peace, inactivity towards one’s enemies) and “fight fire with fire” (not hesitating to fight said enemies with all available means).

Also, the author seemed to have enjoyed himself tremendously by sprinkling all sorts of cultural references here and there. Such as when Violet tells us about a new know she invented and names Sumac, after a singer she likes (Sumac = Camus backwards, and it can probably be said that “singer”/performer is some sort of opposite to “writer” too). Most of these references are to be found in Sunny’s “dialect” though, such as when she says “Matahari” wanting to say she’ll be a spy, “Rosebud” when she wanted to signal to her brothers to use the toboggan and “Godot”, meaning “We don’t know where to go, and we don’t know how to get there“.

The usual paragraph placed at the beginning of the book, meant to ward off readers, in this case is:

[...]unlike books most people prefer, which provide comforting and entertaining tales about charming people and talking animals, the tale you are reading now is nothing but distressing and unnerving, and the people unfortunate enough to be in the story are far more desperate and frantic than charming, and I would prefer to not speak about the animals at all. For that reason, I can no more suggest the reading of this woeful book than I can recommend wandering around the woods by yourself, because like the road less traveled, this book is likely to make you feel lonely, miserable, and in need of help.

What I liked most: The way the author has hidden a letter to his sister in a particularly boring part of the book :) (much like, later on, a secret clue is hidden in a list of ingredients since no one usually reads those).

Speaking of which, I have a new theory regarding the way the book will end. Not that the series have been predictable on the whole, far from it, but I like guessing at what might happen next. My previous theory was that Lemony Snicket’s beloved Beatrice (that he mentions as having married another man and died sometimes since) was actually the Baudelaire mother. After reading this book though I have a new one [possible spoiler although it shouldn't be since it's only a supposition]: I think that the Baudelaire mother was none other than Lemony and Jacques Snicket’s sister. Time will tell (although to be honest the thing I would like most would be a totally unpredictable denouement)(by the way, the book ended with the children heading towards a hotel called Hotel Denouement, and I don’t think it’s a random name, especially as there are only three more books left of the series).

Oh, and I also enjoyed the hint of romance in the air :)

What I liked least: Nothing (although at first I was a wee bit bothered by the idea of Sunny being called a young girl since she cannot actually talk, plus how old can she be since she was a baby not so long ago — it seemed a bit exaggerated to me; but later on, seeing how much pride she takes in her new state, I sort of got used to the idea and it stopped bothering me).

Recommend it to? Everyone who read the previous books. While the first few volumes could be enjoyed as standalone books too, the later ones are intricately connected so the best way to enjoy them is knowing what happened previously.

This book is a sequel to:
The Bad Beginning
The Reptile Room
The Wide Window
The Miserable Mill
The Austere Academy
The Ersatz Elevator
The Vile Village
The Hostile Hospital
The Carnivorous Carnival

This book is followed by:
The Grim Grotto
The Penultimate Peril
The End

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Popularity: 18% [?]

The children are, again, the well behaved and courageous children I have grown to very much like while reading the previous books. Sunny is growing up, bit by bit, and, although she still can only talk in short words (actual ones or invented), she helped someone prepare hot chocolate with cinnamon (after her very own recipe). Making me all the more curious to see how she’ll turn up when she’ll be a bit older. Madame Lulu seemed to me to be quite a promising character, at least because of her smarts if not her decisiveness (I’ll admit she was quite confused), and I would have loved to see more of her in future books. Oh, and let’s not forget Esme Squalor, whose character becomes a bit more fleshed out in this particular book — we discover her to be the jealous type and quite a possessive girlfriend (but does she actually have feelings for the Count? Is she actually capable of feeling? we do not yet know).

This book seemed to me to be a turning point in the series. Up until now the three children were sent in various places and Olaf, in disguise, went along and made their life hell. Here we have the Baudelaire kids taking offensive action for the first time (and probably not the last): this time they are the ones in disguise, closing in on an unsuspecting Olaf, searching for information that could help them get rid of him. Their situation doesn’t improve the tiniest bit though, and the ending is the most suspenseful one yet (for the first time the children have to part). At the same time though there is a certain ray of hope shining onto them, and I am starting to think that I do know how it will all end up. I may of course be wrong but either way I am quite curious to see what happens next.

As usual, the author placed a warning at the very beginning of the book (I’m having fun imagining him wrecking his mind in order to find new ways of telling basically the same thing – “reader, stay away” – at the beginning of every volume). Here’s the current one:

Three times over the course of this story, characters will be inside some terrible place with little chance of escaping safely, and for that reason I would put this book down and escape safely yourself, because this woeful story is so very dark and wretched and damp that the experience of reading it will make you feel as if you are in the belly of the beast, and that time doesn’t count either.

What I liked most: The fact that the answer to a question the reader might have had after reading the previous books (“How did Olaf always knew where to find the children?”) is now revealed. And it’s quite a simple and logical one too.

What I liked least: I must confess I was a bit bothered about the way the lions were treated by the Count, as I do not like reading about cruelty to animals. I do understand the fact that the story needed that (the Count being the vile person that he was he couldn’t have acted any other way), I just did not enjoy it.

Recommend it to? Anyone who enjoys children’s books. Especially dark and gloomy ones. Knowing the prequels is not absolutely mandatory but would very much help.

This book is a sequel to:
The Bad Beginning
The Reptile Room
The Wide Window
The Miserable Mill
The Austere Academy
The Ersatz Elevator
The Vile Village
The Hostile Hospital

This book is followed by:
The Slippery Slope
The Grim Grotto
The Penultimate Peril
The End

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Popularity: 11% [?]

The author has taken the strange, twisted world from Lewiss Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”, reinterpreting the characters and (some of the) events in order to make them form one big, connected story. There are characters corresponding to almost every one of the important characters in “Alice”, only usually with an amazing twist: so much so that they are hardly recognizable but for one detail that gives them away. For example, Redd is the author’s take on the Red Queen in “Alice” — although the two have nothing in common but the habit of screaming “Off with his/her head!” when angry. The Mad Hatter has become Hatter Madigan (nothing in common but the name and the top hat), a feared warrior who became a legend in our own world. The grinning Cheshire Cat (predictably enough one of my favorite characters in “Alice”) is no longer grinning and no longer Cheshire: he’s called The Cat and he’s a huge cat with literally nine lives, a trained assassin under Redd’s command. The “pair” that amused me the most was the one between the White Rabbit and Bibwit Harte — while Harte has nothing of a rabbit whatsoever, him being the respectable tutor of a long line of Wonderland queens, his very name is an anagram of “White Rabbit”! (luckily this is mentioned in the book as I am fairly certain I wouldn’t have thought of that myself :) ). Speaking of characters, a novel one but also very captivating is the general Doppelganger, who can, at will, split in two identical generals, General Doppel and General Ganger :)

I very much loved the way real characters are intermingled with fictional ones. From the very beginning we are told that Lewis Carroll wrote “Alice in Wonderland” after talking to Alice Liddell (a thing every fan of the Alice books knows as true). The twist is that Alice is very much insulted when seeing the book, as it’s nothing like what she remembered of Wonderland — so much so that she never wants to see Lewis Carroll again (something that actually happened in real life too, at one point Alice reacted this very way, only the reason is unknown). I was absolutely delighted to read this part due to its roots in reality — less so when I saw how the story unfolded though: Alice met Prince Leopold and he fell in love with her. Now this struck me as too much a liberty to be taken with real characters, how could a real prince meet an fall in love with an ordinary girl, especially one as plain looking (or so it seems to me) one as Alice Lydell? But then I looked them up on Wikipedia and, to my utter surprise, there is actually such a rumor, of something having been between Alice and the prince! And yes, he did name his daughter Alice and she did name her son Leopold, just as in the book :)

Since we’re talking of inspiration, I was also amused to note how the kingdom during Redd’s rule was similar to 1984: television screens everywhere, people watched, texts being rewritten, children telling on their parents and getting them sent to the mines for “thoughtcrime” — to name but a few. The author has been careful to also add some unpleasantness of his own though (or at least I don’t remember it from anywhere): there are speakers everywhere, always blaring, not a moment of silence, because, as Redd puts it, silence breeds dissent.

What I liked most: I was fascinated by the very world Beddor imagined. Cities with gleaming buildings, people going to work in “in sleek glass tubes hovering on cushions of air“, a world where, most of all, the imagination becoming reality is a common occurrence. Speaking of imagination, in Wonderland there are two kinds of imagination: White Imagination and Black Imagination (just like there is magic in other worlds hee hee). Here’s a quote I liked about the world:

[...] most of Wonderland took pride in the Inventors’ Parade, the one time every year when citizens flaunted their skills and ingenuity before the queen. If Genevieve saw something in the parade that she thought particularly good, she would send it into the Heart Crystal—a thirty-three-foot-tall, fifty-two-foot-wide shimmering crystal on the palace grounds, the power source for all creation. Whatever passed into the crystal went out into the universe to inspire imaginations in other worlds. If a Wonderlander bounced in front of Queen Genevieve on a spring-operated stick with handlebars and footrests and she passed this curious invention into the crystal, before long, in one civilization or another, a pogo stick would be invented.

And another one, to get a better idea about how imagination in Wonderland worked:

[...]the queen imagined new weapons for herself—swords, sabers, spiked clubs—whenever one was knocked from her grip. She was always armed with four weapons at once, her imagination swinging two of them, to fend off attacks from behind.

Now that’s some imagination, isn’t it? :)

What I liked least: Well, there are some details not very well taken care of — such as how did Dodge get to London on the first try as there was supposedly no way to control the destination? Let’s call it luck but how about The Cat? Or the part where all the mirrors were broken (Redd broke all mirrors thinking of them collectively as mirrors not thinking of each one in turn so the hidden mirror shouldn’t have escaped unharmed). Nevertheless truth is that on the whole I liked reading about that world so much I very easily ignored everything that didn’t fit, not letting it stand in the path of my enjoyment.

Recommend it to? Well, that is perhaps a bit of a tough one as I have seen a few reviews of the book written by “Alice in Wonderland” fans and some of them were very very upset with the author (I never understood why, but then again I am not that fond of the first “Alice” book either). So, if you really really like the original book and do not ant your image of that world challenged in any way, this book is not for you. Everyone else, feel free to give it a try, who knows, you just might like it as much as I did :)

See also
real Alice Liddell’s Wikipedia page, with her pictures taken by Lewis Carroll (some of them mentioned in the book)
The web site dedicated to the series (it also has games! :P )

This book is followed by:
Seeing Redd

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