The Bad Beginning By Lemony Snicket Book Review — Davina Francis

The book, The Bad Beginning, is truly a series of unfortunate events as it reveals the most horrible part of the young Baudelaires’ lives. The title is an exhibition of the manner in which the story is told from beginning to end. It bears the unfolding events that occur in the lives of the three young Baudelaires from the moment they receive the sad news of their parents’ deaths to their temporary stay at the Poes’ family house from which they are moved to live with a distant cousin called Count Olaf. Their arrival at his awful house is an addition of salt to injury as he treats them very badly and addresses them by their childhood status. His brewing and almost accomplished selfish plan of getting married to the eldest of the Baudelaires is thwarted at the end of the story.

Although the author/narrator in his prologue urges his reader not to read on if s/he expects a bad beginning and a good ending, the story ends in a not too good state. This is because the children are not allowed to live with Justice Strauss as they wish, but have to wait until Mr Poe decides on the next relative with whom they will spend the rest of their childhood lives.

The book is majorly a children’s read with meanings to words or phrases that might seem difficult for them to comprehend and it’s story told in form of a moonlight tale or the random “Sleeping Beauty” and “Cinderella” where a narrator recounts the actions and thoughts of the characters in a story to his or her audience. It is necessary that both adults and children read it because it stirs up wise thoughts in the reader’s mind as well as teaches morals.

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