The Bad Beginning
1999
- fiction
- humorous stories
- brothers and sisters
- orphans
- children's fiction
- brothers and sisters, fiction
- orphans, fiction
- juvenile fiction
- orphans -- juvenile fiction
- brothers and sisters -- juvenile fiction
The story
After the sudden death of their parents, the three Baudelaire children must depend on each other and their wits when it turns out that the distant relative who is appointed their guardian is determined to use any means necessary to get their fortune.
What it’s like
Dry, deadpan narration pressed onto spare, cluttered pages, with a voice that addresses the reader directly, warns them off happy endings, and turns every grim turn into a knowing aside. The mood is wry gloom softened by absurdist humour: a cozy-dark rainy-afternoon read, the kind that suits a comfort reread or a long evening with a flashlight under the covers. Its pace is quick and chapter-driven, with short paragraphs, frequent digressions, and a vocabulary that delights in unusual words, each one defined in passing. The three Baudelaire siblings, a resourceful eldest, an inventive middle child, and a baby who communicates in bursts, are shown leaning on one another and their wits against an absurd and menacing adult world, so the emotional register is tender in its loyalty even as the surface stays arch. Intensity is low: peril and cruelty appear, mostly as menace and dark comedy, with no gore and no sexual content, and the darkness stays at a child's-book distance. It suits young readers who enjoy being in on a joke, and adults who want children's fiction with a sly, literate wit.
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