The Bad Beginning (1999)
The Bad Beginning is a 1999 juvenile fiction / family / orphans & foster homes book written by Lemony Snicket.
Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire are clever, charming, resourceful, and extraordinarily unlucky. After their parents die in a fire, the three orphans are shipped off to a distant relative, the dreadful Count Olaf, who wants nothing but the fortune they stand to inherit. Olaf houses them in squalor, sets them cruel tasks, and hatches a scheme to get the money by any means available. The narrator, Lemony Snicket, warns you at every turn that this story ends badly and begs you to read something cheerier instead. His deadpan gloom, styled somewhere between Dickens and Dahl, is the whole delicious joke.
Quick answers
What is The Bad Beginning about?
Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire are clever, charming, resourceful, and extraordinarily unlucky. After their parents die in a fire, the three orphans are shipped off to a distant relative, the dreadful Count Olaf, who wants nothing but the fortune they stand to inherit. Olaf houses them in squalor, sets them cruel tasks, and hatches a scheme to get the money by any means available. The narrator, Lemony Snicket, warns you at every turn that this story ends badly and begs you to read something cheerier instead. His deadpan gloom, styled somewhere between Dickens and Dahl, is the whole delicious joke.
When was The Bad Beginning published?
The Bad Beginning was published in 1999.
Who made The Bad Beginning?
The Bad Beginning was written by Lemony Snicket.
Similar books
Explore The Bad Beginning guides
The Bad Beginning in our writing
A few thoughts on The Bad Beginning
The natural companion is the Netflix series A Series of Unfortunate Events, which stretches Snicket's arch misery into three seasons with Neil Patrick Harris chewing every scene as Olaf. The 2004 film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events gives the gothic version with Jim Carrey. For the same handmade, macabre-for-kids charm, try Coraline.
Gothic tales of children versus the greedy guardians who control them
The Bad Beginning turns Count Olaf's greed and Lemony Snicket's gloomy asides into a whole household mood, so it makes sense next to other stories where children out-scheme the adults meant to protect them. Coraline's Other Mother, the Baudelaires' onscreen misadventures, and the imprisoned siblings of Flowers in the Attic all share that same deadpan dread and a real appetite for a family member's inheritance.