As the Baudelaires discovered that their parents were part of a mysterious organisation called VFD and worked to get to the bottom of what that means, the reader was there with them, trying to decipher the hints and clues. What made these books different? In 13 books over seven years, Handler invited participation, which begets an obsessive fanbase. It was controversial – some schools restricted access to the books over their suggestions of incest and swearing – but this only enticed children more.
It was dark and difficult, and appealed to morbid and precocious children by toeing the line between child and adult fiction in a way nothing ever had before. Narrated by Lemony Snicket, whose sworn duty it is to retell the “true” events of the three Baudelaire children, Violet, Klaus and Sunny, the 13 books see the unlucky orphans evade kidnapping and murder in the wake of their parents’ death by arson.
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Released in 1999, when the adolescent book market was dominated by Harry Potter, A Series of Unfortunate Events provided even darker fare in a field full of orphans and murder. After all, there’s nothing kids want to do more than prove adults wrong. With that sentence alone, first published 20 years ago, Snicket – AKA author Daniel Handler – hooked a very particular audience. ‘I f you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other one,” starts The Bad Beginning, the first instalment of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.
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