A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Fourth
I began listening to this series of books with my kids because A Bad Beginning had been on my to-read list for about twenty years. I had always been too mature, of course, to dabble in children’s literature, which is why my wife and I had children: so we could have an excuse to keep reading kids books.
My kids adored The Reptile Room and thankfully we all survived The Wide Window, so by this point we were all hooked. Truth be told, we still are.
This fourth installment to the series, The Miserable Mill, opens with perhaps the best introductory talk of the series from Lemony Snicket. In it, he discusses that first lines of books, and his thoughts are as entertaining as they are insightful.
The three Baudelaire children—Violet, Klaus, and Sunny—have been assigned by Mr. Poe a new guardian who is involved with a lumber mill in a strange town. The town houses an eye-shaped building that looks just like the tattoo on Count Olaf’s ankle, so the children assume that he’s not too far away, devising his treachery to steal their family fortune.
Count Olaf’s absence, actually was a bit of a mystery to us as we listened, and I was surprised to learn who his character was in the story. I thought that Snicket successfully conveyed this quandary for the children and that the twist made this the most mysterious of the books yet.
This book contains a new host of oddball characters and situations, hypnotism and murder. It falls right in line with the rest, but the deeper we move into the story, the more we begin to recognize that Olaf and guardians aren’t the only threads which weave these tales together.
It was in this particular book that my kids and I came to realize the similarities in the books thus far. Of course, there is the obvious, that the three children are running from Count Olaf whose schemes are designed to infiltrate the Baudelaire lives so that he can kill two of them and preserve the third for her inheritance. Beyond this, each of the stories also contains both a kindly person willing to help the Baudelaire children, and a library or some sort. I have listened to almost all of the books in the series by now, and I can assure you that this remains the process, the formula of the books from here on out.
I have in my notes a comment about loving Snicket’s hilarious discussion about getting one’s arm chewed off by a crocodile, but I can’t recall exactly what the context was. I wonder if that means I’ll be reading this one again someday…
©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)