A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Third

We’ve been listening to this series on Harper Audio during our now-long drives to and from town, and we’ve adored Tim Curry’s take on the characters. I probably don’t know what “thespian” really means, but I think he’s definitely one!

When we noticed that the actual Lemony Snicket was voicing this installment (well, the actual author behind the pseudonym Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler), we were a bit bummed. Handler carries none of the pizzazz of the unbelievably skilled Tim Curry, and his voice was so soft, we had to crank the stereo up to 50. Honestly, if his voice (or “voices”) is all it takes to record a professional children’s audio book, I’d like a crack at it! It was pretty brutal.

Getting past that annoyance, we also felt that this book wasn’t as good as the rest. It was shorter in length, which is nice if you’re in a hurry to finish the book because you don’t like the person reading it, but not so much if you’re invested in the characters. By this point, we’re pretty invested in the Baudelaire orphans.

In this story, the three children visit another guardian, their Aunt Josephine, a hermitic grammarian terrified of fire and real-estate agents (it makes more sense the more you read, I guess). She lives in an old house on a cliff overlooking Lake Lachrymose, a leach-infested body of fresh water that also happens to be prone to hurricanes.

This Aunt Josephine meets a dashingly deviant sailor named Captain Sham, who is the Baudelaire’s arch nemesis in disguise. She falls quickly in love (somehow) with the man, which sets the game afoot. When Aunt Josephine goes missing in an apparent suicide, Captain Sham attempts to convince Mr. Poe to give him the guardianship rights over the children. The kids fenagle their way out of the mess before the men can sign the papers, but they won’t be safe until Captain Sham can be unmasked. Too bad Mr. Poe is a complete idiot!

This book contains such dangerous incidents as an accidental death-by-leaches, suicide, betrayal, and murder-by-leaches making this the darkest story yet. I wasn’t really a fan of this one, and it sent me looking more deeply into who this Daniel Handler is. I checked him out on Wikipedia, and let me tell you, it’s definitely a “how the sausage is made” page that will make you reconsider whether or not you should keep reading the guy.

We have kept reading, of course. We’re nearing the end of the whole series in fact, and we’ve noticed a lightening of the themes, which is good. One bit of constant humor that I appreciate in the tales is Snicket’s use and description of idioms. In this one, he describes “the moral of the story,” giving this example for clarity: “The moral of WWI is to never assassinate Count Ferdinand.” That made me laugh.

Snicket also tends to slip into these stories little flashes of hope. In this case, the orphans learn to appreciate each other, to appreciate how important it is to have each other even though their parents are gone. They are for each other like a sailboat in the middle of a hurricane. It was a sweet moment that I think sinks in for kids (pun intended?).

Though this book wasn’t our favorite, and though it spurred me to read up on the miserable worldview of its author, we still enjoyed it as part of the greater whole. Other, far more interesting stories are to follow—The Miserable Mill is next—and we’re excited about how it all will end.

©2021 E.T.

Read More in A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket:

1. A Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket (1999)
2. The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket (1999)
3. The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket (2000)
4. The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket (2000)
5. The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket (2000)
6. The Ersatz Elevator by Lemony Snicket (2001)
7. The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket (2001)
8. The Hostile Hotel by Lemony Snicket (2001)
9. The Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket (2002)
10. The Slipper Slope by Lemony Snicket (2003)
11. The Grim Grotto by Lemony Snicket (2004)
12. The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket (2005)
13. The End by Lemony Snicket (2006)