Review: The Bad Beginning

The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I devoured this book years ago in one sitting while waiting at the bookstore. The Series of Unfortunate Events books were everywhere then and their faux Victorian covers caught my attention.

When I started reading it I thought I was going to hate it. The tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top misery of the story, the constant use of the joke for explaining words... I love formulaic stories, I really do, but I thought this was just too much...

I ended up really liking it though. It didn't matter how artificial the author's devices seemed to be because when he needed to be genuine he was. The Baudelaires' sadness was genuine and Olaf was a genuinely scary villain. Their troubles are caused by the adults ignoring them and that is so often the cause of a child's tragedy.

I also found it inspiring how evocative the writing was. I loved the film of the books and thought that the almost timburtonesque look of it was perfect, mostly because it matched my impression of the story so well. And the author does this with very little description and a vague sense of era for the books. It's very economic, every little bit counts to create this atmosphere, the covers, the names of the characters reminding you of old-fashioned writers...

I only managed to snag the first book that time at the bookstore. I was still a poor high school student and had to be very careful with how I spent my pocket money. But this year I've made a commitment to finally reading all the Series of Unfortunate Events

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