a reread of unfortunate events
the inciting incident
this is my third time through this series - first at 9 or so, then again in my late teens, and now this (perhaps final) time with a fully developed brain. i wanted to document the journey with a little shrine, so i took notes throughout, and i present to you here a mix of nostalgia, overanalysis, and loving conspiracy.
as a preliminary aside, i feel like this series and Welcome to Night Vale are kindred worlds. Night Vale feels like a dark parallel of the American Southwest in the same way that the Snicketverse feels like a dark parallel of England.
spoilers! obviously!
book the first: the bad beginning
overall thoughts
i came back to this expecting to be perhaps mildly amused and nostalgic, but i found out very quickly that the writing was actually quite great the whole time. the iconic word and phrase definitions were there, cheekier than i remembered, and between them there were many good words said about grief and loss and hardship. i'm thrilled that i enjoyed this at age thirty-something without even needing the rose-tinted glasses.
oh and it was fucking heartbreaking, by the way!! someday i might have the words to express how it made me feel through the lens of my own particular childhood trauma, but that's not what this shrine is about. suffice to say that there's a painful but welcome resonance there. the future installments lean a little heavier into despair of the outlandish kind, which is easier to find comical - this one has a particular grime and dinge to it that just wrenches the sensitive soul.
quality quotes
If you have ever lost someone important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven't, you cannot possibly imagine it.
i didn't expect something this true and this simply said right off the bat.
...the worst surroundings in the world can be tolerated if the people in them are interesting and kind.
chalk another one up under True and Simply Said.
But his face still had a bruise on it, so Klaus remained silent.
i don't know. it's a simple line, but it's real and it hurts.
the snicket files
what do we know about the narrator/writer of this terrible tale? a few clues so far...
"In my room, for instance, I have gathered a collection of objects that are important to me, including a dusty accordion on which I can play a few sad songs, a large bundle of notes on the activities of the Baudelaire orphans, and a blurry photograph, taken a very long time ago, of a woman whose name is Beatrice."
i'm not going to document every single shenanigan that Mr. Snicket alludes to being involved in - mostly just the ones about Beatrice, because i can't help but love a man who yearns.
the wider world
these books drop some very interesting worldbuilding tidbits alongside the story, and i intend to collect them, even if they're just incidental. just one for now:
They passed an enormous pile of dirt where the Royal Gardens once stood.
hmm... wonder what that's about. maybe nothing. but as a detail, i like it.
most unfortunate event
i mean, obviously it's losing your parents to a mysterious house fire, but i would like to point out that an attempt at a coerced child marriage is also extremely heinous.
book the second: the reptile room
overall thoughts
book two doesn't quite have the oomph of book one, but that doesn't mean it was unenjoyable. it dialed in the humor that persists through the rest of the series and introduces Uncle Monty, who is my favorite of the erstwhile Baudelaire guardians. but i don't have as many quotes noted down, nor juicy details about Mr. Snicket and his beloved Beatrice.
snake facts
The Barbary Chewer, for example, is a snake that must have something in its mouth at all times, otherwise it begins to eat its own mouth.
it's silly. i snorted. :3
There is a pair of snakes who have learned to drive a car so recklessly that they would run you over in the street and never stop to apologize.
i snorted again. i'm a simple person.
a strange suggestion
"You have won this round of the game, but I will return for your fortune, and for your precious skin."
it shouldn't be surprising that this comes out of the mouth of Count Olaf, but it's surprising in every other sense. like sir what the fuck does that mean??
most unfortunate event
the constant references to Uncle Monty's lifeless corpse in front of the children who just lost him as a guardian.
book the third: the wide window
overall thoughts
in this one, we arrive at Damocles Dock on the shores of Lake Lachrymose, known for both its violent hurricanes and flesh-eating leeches. our guardian du jour is Aunt Josephine, a woman whose love of safety precautions is only exceeded by her love of proper grammar.
i remembered this one the most clearly, thanks in part to the 2004 movie and in part because Aunt Josephine's final letter and the twist therein stuck hard in my brain over the years. on the reread i very much appreciated that the narrator calls out these well-intentioned but ultimately untrustworthy adults at every turn.
Mr. Poe was kindhearted, but it is not enough in this world to be kindhearted, particularly if you are responsible for keeping children out of danger.
in hindsight, it's easy to conceptualize these first three books as one long installment, and this is a good wrap-up to this initial arc.
the snicket files
a single juicy tidbit. our narrator says:
I have seen a woman I loved picked up by an enormous eagle and flown to its high mountain nest.
perhaps this is how our beloved Beatrice died? that's what i figured, anyway. imagine my surprise when in the tenth book - no, no, i've said too much. we'll get there.
quality quotes
Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it might be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it.
reader, i guffawed. i think this is my favorite line in the entire series.
most unfortunate event
Aunt Josephine being pushed to her gruesome death before the childrens' very eyes.
book the fourth: the miserable mill
overall thoughts
here's where it starts getting weird, y'all. this fourth installment feels like a quick gasp of air between the starting trilogy and the wild downhill careen that makes up the rest of the series.
instead of being placed with a questionably-distant relative this time, the children are handed over to the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, where they must face the greatest of all evils: capitalism. (oh and also Count Olaf still.)
it's a more Klaus-heavy story this time, which unfortunately means this poor kid is subject to horrors. his glasses break and he's sent to the totally normal optometry office of Dr. Orwell - and returns different.
i fear we are all in the mill
at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, employees are not paid in cash, not even in company scrip, but in coupons for random services that they still can't afford.
at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, the employee dormitory has a set of lovely windows. they are drawn in ballpoint pen on blank and otherwise-windowless walls.
at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, lunch is a stick of chewing gum. to cut costs, used gum has been repurposed to create the lettering on the large sign out front.
at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, the boss's partner was gifted a beautiful, expansive library to hold the three entire books he owns.
Beatrice and birds
we've been told about a link between Beatrice and eagles already, but here our narrator says that when he asked Beatrice to marry him, she sent him a 200-page novel explaining exactly why, delivered in parts by an entire flock of carrier pigeons. the lady has a thing for birds and i love that for her.
also, for the first time we are told explicitly that Beatrice was aware of Count Olaf, so while he was a stranger to the children when he appeared, it seems he was no stranger to the family...
most unfortunate event
this one's bad, you guys - so bad i can't even pick a single event. because of course, being forced into child slave labor at a lumbermill is heinous. witnessing not one, but two gruesome workplace accidents is also heinous. being piloted against your will by an evil hypnotist is also, if you can believe it, heinous.
book the fifth: the austere academy
overall thoughts
this is where the story hits its stride. we are introduced to so many characters and concepts that will follow out for the rest of the series.
most importantly, in my opinion, this is where we meet the triplets, Duncan and Isadora Quagmire. their third sibling, Quigley, perished along with their parents in a mysterious house fire, leaving the two remaining triplets as the heirs to the Quagmire sapphires. what interesting circumstances...
the Quagmires have hyperfixations like the Baudelaires: Duncan is a reporter and researcher, and Isadora is a poet and writes many rhyming couplets. but their most useful skill is just straight up friendship, which the Baudelaire kids desperately need at this point in their miserable tale. the bonds they all developed throughout the book were unusually heartwarming - but alas, all good things must come to an end...
finally, i'll note here something i only found out while doing a little research - Isadora and Duncan's names are a reference to the dancer Isadora Duncan, whose neck was tragically snapped when her scarf got tangled in the wheels of her automobile - a suitably Snicketine end to her otherwise glamorous life.
scene and setting
we end up this time at Prufrock Prep, which is so comically awful that i'll simply give you an extended quote from the book's wikipedia page.
Vice Principal Nero tells them about the school's odd rules: They are to sleep in a crab-infested, fungus-dripping shack because they have no living guardian to sign a permission slip for them. Additionally, since Sunny is too young to be a student, she will work as Nero's administrative assistant, and they all must attend Nero's nightly terrible violin concerts. Punishments for breaking these rules include being made to eat in the cafeteria with no silverware or hands tied behind one's back and having to purchase candy for Nero and watch him eat it. Sunny will have her silverware removed permanently for working in the administrative building, in which children are not allowed.
the snicket files
oh, our poor, yearning, tormented narrator...
...I dared to approach a woman I had been forbidden to approach for the rest of my life. ... I slipped out to the veranda and gave her the message I'd been trying to give her for fifteen long and lonely years. "Beatrice," I cried ... "Count Olaf is
I cannot go on.
who or what is VFD?
in the final pages of the book, when Isabella and Duncan are snatched up by Olaf's troupe and taken who knows where, they manage to pass on a single clue to their Baudelaire friends: VFD.
so what's VFD, besides the inciting information that sets the rest of the story in motion? at this point, i did not remember. it took a few more books for me to make my guess, and a few more after that until it was confirmed. if you're playing along at home (and still don't want to read the books for some reason), note down your guesses now.
the criminal count
Duncan's research uncovered some of Olaf's previous crimes...
in Verona, Count Olaf was found to have thrown a rich widow off a cliff. in Bangkok, he was arrested for strangling a bishop, but escaped prison in under ten minutes.
most unfortunate event
nine consecutive nights of sleep deprivation and being forced to run in circles for hours on hours.
(the constant bullying by Carmelita Spats is a close second, though.)
book the sixth: the ersatz elevator
overall thoughts
my dearest reader, we have arrived.