The Austere Academy broadens the world of the Baudelaire
children, because they make new friends, Duncan and Isadora Quagmire,
at their new school. There’s a point near the middle of the story
when Duncan and Isadora set off to perform a task that will help
Violet, Klaus and Sunny, and the Baudelaires are reminded of the
last time they saw their parents before the family home burned
down and they became orphans. The three children are filled with
sadness, thinking of the things they should have said to their
parents that they now regret not having said. Now at this poignant
moment of separation from their new friends before each group
was due to take great risks, the children felt the need to express
their affection to Duncan and Isadora, in case they never saw
their friends again. The children’s loss makes every moment of
their subsequent life more precious and heightens the sense of
the fragility of their new friendship. But they don’t have time
to say everything they want because they are in terrible danger
from Count Olaf.

As usual, they can’t turn to any adults for help or comfort. Vice-principal
Nero, who only cares about composing music for the violin and
then playing his new compositions to the rest of the school every
night, does not care about his new charges, and their awful teachers
are completely clueless. Even the other children at the school,
apart from the Quagmire triplets, are horrible to them, and show
no hesitation in jeering loudly at the Baudelaires and their friends,
"Cake sniffing orphans in the Orphan Shack. Cake sniffing
orphans in the Orphan Shack. …" It’s impossible not
to feel one’s heart breaking as the poor children suffering one
unfortunate event after another.

The narrator of these stories, Lemony Snicket, reveals more about
his life, his love for the now deceased Beatrice, and the adventures
he has had in pursuing the truth about the Baudelaire children,
than he has in previous stories, but it is still all very mysterious.
As we come to know more about Mr. Snicket though, it becomes clearer
that his is also a fallible source of information, in his explanation
of the meaning of words, and when he says that it is important
to get a good night’s sleep if one has a test the next day, unless
one is reading a good book, in which case one can just flunk the
test.

It seems that the books in A Series of Unfortunate Events
become increasingly complex and sophisticated in their plots and
in their creation of a relationship between the reader and the
narrator, leaving the reader to speculate about the stories being
told. This makes these stories especially attractive to children
who can understand such complexities as well as adult readers
with a sense of fun. Lemony Snicket does a great job reading the unabridged audiobook –
a significant improvement on his earlier performances. The musical
contribution of the Gothic Archies, sung by Stephen Merritt, is
also greater here than in previous books; the songs about the
terrible violin playing of Vice Principal Nero are priceless.

In short, this is a wonderful book and I fully recommend it to
you.

Links:

• Chapter One of The Austere Academy
  
• Review of The Miserable Mill.
  
• Review of The Wide Window
  
• Review of The Reptile Room.
  
• Review of The Bad Beginning.
  
• Lemony Snicket web site.
  

© 2002 Christian Perring. First Serial Rights.

Christian Perring,
Ph.D., is Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College,
Long Island. He is editor of Metapsychology Online Review.
His main research is on philosophical issues in psychiatry.
He is especially interested in exploring how philosophers can
play a greater role in public life, and he is keen to help foster
communication between philosophers, mental health professionals,
and the general public.

Categories: Fiction