“The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance;
We find delight in the most loathsome things;
Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings,
And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.” — Charles Baudelaire

“Men only want one thing, and it’s the Baudelaire fortune” — SparkNotes Twitter account

This exceeded by expectations considerably. The whole premise is quite ambitious for a Middle Grade book, grappling seriously with themes of bereavement, abuse, and the precariousness of children’s lives and wellbeing, all within an approach to the Gothic genre combined with an ambiguous setting (here referenced vaguely as ‘the community’, with a mixture of old-fashioned elements such as few laws and lax standards, but in which computers are also mentioned) all delivered in a manner unusual for children’s literature. The tone is also deeply melancholy at times, because their bereavement is dealt with in a realistic manner.

The author introduces us to new concepts and vocabulary throughout, forcing the reader out of the usual comfort zone of children’s literature into more challenging uncharted territory; I particularly enjoyed the 'figuratively vs. literally’ motif, initially explained through the authorial voice as a bit of vocabulary and later tied into the plot. The story is surprisingly fatalist — everything seems to happen in an ‘inevitable’ way, with the sense that things will always go wrong no matter what decisions our characters make, and the only power they really have is narrowly to avoid the ensuing disasters as much as possible. The Baudelaire children will continue to be a magnet for misfortune throughout the series, and there is nothing they can do to escape this — the powerlessness of children in the face of adult patronising and incompetence is a recurring theme.

Like a lot of children’s novels, the parents and other serious authority figures are removed from the picture, allowing the protagonists more agency and freedom to adventure than real-life children would usually enjoy. On the other hand, authority figures such as the children’s various ‘caretakers’ still play a significant role, but usually are either sinister or untrustworthy. Mr. Poe, the banker family friend who has to find the Baudelaires’ said caretakers after their parents die, is well-meaning but continually fails to fulfil his obligation to protect the children’s safety, which obviously hinges on the book’s absurdist style. One of the more interesting theme is how benevolent but complacent and patronising adults can be complicit in harm to children alongside those with genuinely ill intentions.

In general, The characters are sketched out quite simply, but that’s part of Handler's style and I think the one-dimensionality of minor characters in particular is part of the absurdist comic effect. I have read the first few instalments now and I think the major characters (particularly Klaus) get a little more depth as the series goes on. However, I was surprised by how dark and frightening it was willing to get, particularly regarding the villain. The child protagonists are threatened, abused, and put in real mortal danger by the villains (and the paternal instincts kick in at times for an adult reader). I particularly enjoyed the old-fashioned prejudice against actors, which is part of the more mature humour where the historical context might go over a child’s head, but they would at least understand in the direct sense that actors are often stereotyped ‘professional liars’ and can be quite pretentious and narcissistic. (Please note I am not endorsing these characterisations, but just exploring how actors are critically viewed!) The characterisation of the henchmen is also intriguing — more surreal than merely absurd in some ways (I did wonder how the man with hooks for hands would eat the puttanesca, or navigate life in general). The portrayal of these characters is surprisingly reactionary (the latter is an amputee; is simply characterised as extremely fat; one is simply androgynous, not perceptibly a man nor a woman), but the portrayal of what makes them evil will hopefully be more complex later on in the series.

The humour is excellent — mostly dry, particularly for a children’s novel, and very well-suited to my tastes, where I’ve found other famous humour novels, despite being aimed at adults, a bit cheesy. As I’ve said, I enjoyed the running gags of the non-literal definitions of words and the figuratively vs. literally joke, but my favourite in this instalment was the following:

“Are you familiar with the Latin term ‘in loco parentis’?” he asked.
…“Something about trains?” he asked. Maybe Mr. Poe was going to take them by train to another relative.”

Although the characters are otherwise unusually mature, the childhood innocence and hopefulness here was so charming. The audiobook performance by Tim Curry certainly makes the most of these witty moments.

Being middle-grade, the book overall is nothing life-changing, but it is complex and well-wrought by the standards of a children’s book: it goes against the cheerful tone and happy endings of Disney-style entertainment, and explores moral relativism in decision-making, what people get vs. what they deserve, and in turn conveys the message that doing the right thing is not always rewarded, but it should still be done. The ending is thus open-ended, in keeping with the tone, and to communicate that the characters still have a long and difficult journey ahead of them in which neither they nor the reader will get to enjoy short-term satisfaction any time soon.