Kay's Bookshelf

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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Popularity: 19% [?]

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

Amazon Affiliate. If you click an Amazon link and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

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

Amazon Affiliate. If you click an Amazon link and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

Popularity: 11% [?]

As far as characters go, Sunny is still my favorite of them all. She is speaking clearer now, still in very few words but usually identifiable ones. She seems to be growing up fast I am very curious if she’ll grow some more teeth in the near future :P (right now she only has four). Also, Lemony Snicket himself is weaving more and more of his own story in the book: so far we know that he was (is?) very much in love with Beatrice (this particular book is dedicated to her by the way); she married someone else and then she died of unknown reasons — presumably something having to do with Esme Squalor (the mystery deepens). I am wondering if Beatrice is by any chance the mother of the three Baudelaire kids, hee hee, as she sort of fulfills all the conditions (she was married to someone else than the author, she knew Esme Squalor, she died). An interesting character in this book (albeit one with a very short presence in it) was Babs — the Head of Human Resources at the hospital, whose firm belief is that children should be seen not heard and adults should be heard and not seen (which is why no one has ever seen her, she communicates to people via intercom) :)

The author’s warning to the reader in this book (as you have probably noticed by now I sort of collect them) is:

But there is another reason why a writer would end a sentence with “stop” written entirely in capital letters, and that is to warn readers that the book they are reading is so utterly wretched that if they have begun reading it, the best thing to do would be to stop STOP. This particular book, for instance, describes an especially unhappy time in the dreadful lives of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, and if you have any sense at all you will shut this book immediately, drag it up a tall mountain, and throw it off the very top STOP.

I find it fascinating how he says the very same thing at the beginning of each book, and yet in very different ways and words :)

Speaking of the author I was amused to notice some of the names he chose to give the hospital patients: we have an Emma Bovary, and also a Mikhail Bulgakov and a Haruki Murakami :)

What I liked most: It is interesting to note how, with every book I get more and more curious about what happens next and how on earth will the series end. Surprisingly enough I am not in the least bit bored with the series although this in no less than the 8th book! :)

What I liked least: Nothing, hee hee :) Of course I have my doubts about Sunny being taken for a grown-up woman (and Klaus too) but oh well, everything is possible in this kind of books :P

Recommend it to? Anyone who liked the previous books, of course (while the first few books were sort of stand-alone, sharing only their characters, the latest few are connected and at least the previous one is needed in order for this one to be properly understood and enjoyed).

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

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

Amazon Affiliate. If you click an Amazon link and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

Popularity: 13% [?]

After all this time (and all these books) there is not much new I can say about the three protagonists. Violet is the same, always trying to do her best to protect her siblings, Klaus celebrates his 13th birthday in a prison cell, and Sunny — well, at least Sunny, being the youngest, gets to change the most, as she’s still into the growing phase. To my delight she is starting to actually articulate words (even two at a time!), getting it right on about a third of the time, which, of course, is an improvement. Not only that but she also managed to take her first steps! A thing that has delighted me given that Sunny is my favorite character and I can’t wait to see how she’ll turn out when she’ll grow up :) An interesting character introduced in this book is Jacques Snicket, “the brother of a man who —“. I am of course very curious both about him and about his brother, that I’m guessing it’s the very author, but unfortunately this will have to wait until at least the next book (hee hee, all the more reason to read it :P)

This is the seventh book in a series of thirteen and I am glad to see that not only the author manages to keep up my interest in the fate of the three children (actually five if we count the two triplets), but he also makes the mystery surrounding them deeper and deeper. Finishing this installment left me with a lot of questions: to the ones I had until now, “What is VFD and how is it related to the death of the Baudelaire parents?” and “What is the sad story of the author and of his dear departed Beatrice?”, I have now added another, “How is Jerome related to the author and how did he ended up with his tattoo?”. Oh well, I bet all these will be answered in the next six books (and my secret hope is that all the five children will get to live happily ever after, although it’s a strange thing to hope for with such series :) ).

As usual, here’s the opening quote, warning the reader that this is a gloomy book that would be best put down (I seem to be sort of collecting them in my reviews):

[...] if you insist on reading this book instead of something more cheerful, you will most certainly find yourself moaning in despair instead of wriggling in delight, so if you have any sense at all you will put this book down and pick up another one [...] instead of reading this book and moaning over the terrible things that happened to the three Baudelaire orphans in the village where I am now typing these very words. The misery, woe, and treachery contained in the pages of this book are so dreadful that it is important that you don’t read any more of it than you already have.

And another quote that I have found amusing, and that, perhaps, illustrates one of my favorite aspects of the series — the writing style:

A huge cloud of dust is not a beautiful thing to look at. Very few painters have done portraits of huge clouds of dust or included them in their landscapes or still lifes. Film directors rarely choose huge clouds of dust to play the lead roles in romantic comedies, and as far as my research has shown, a huge cloud of dust has never placed higher than twenty-fifth in a beauty pageant.

What I liked most: The enigma presented by Isadora’s poems, of course. I’m always in for a good mystery and if it’s in rhymes so much the better :P

What I liked least: While at first I loved the fact that the author explained the difficult words to his readers (English is my second language and, although I do know many difficult words, every now and then I ran into a word I was glad to have explained), I think that lately this habit has gotten a bit too particular: instead of giving the actual sense of the word/expression, the author chooses to rephrase them in the actual context. To give but two examples, “But Hector did not rise to the occasion, a phrase which here means “continued to sit in his folding chair with his eyes cast downward,”” and “Violet said indignantly, a word which here means “in defense of an innocent baby.”“. I really preferred being given the absolute sense of the word (as for example indignant = angered by something unjust) rather than the one relative to that particular circumstance. Not that this bothers me that much — after all we’re talking about a story not about a vocabulary book :)

Recommend it? Of course (understandable enough since I am quite a fan of the series — at my age!)

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

This book is followed by:
The Hostile Hospital
The Carnivorous Carnival
The Slippery Slope
The Grim Grotto
The Penultimate Peril
The End

Amazon Affiliate. If you click an Amazon link and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

Popularity: 18% [?]