Lemony Snicket

 

Snicket's eccentric characters, gloomy settings, and twisted plots are back full-force in All the Wrong Questions: "Who Could That Be at This Hour?" The thirteen-year-old Lemony Snicket is already suspicious, worried, and over his head in secrets. Snicket is apprenticed to S. Theodora Markson (asking what the S stands for is a Wrong Question) who is taking him to Stain'd-by-the-Sea, an inconsequential speck on the map, and a thoroughly strange place with lots of its' own secrets. Markson and Snicket are there to do one thing: retrieve and return a statue of the (rather frightening) Bombinating Beast to its rightful owner. But nothing is as simple as it seems, especially when you can't trust anyone. Luckily, book titles can be exchanged for cab rides and there's still one reporter (underage though she may be) trying to dig up the truth. Lemony Snicket knows much more than he's telling and he weaves a complex mystery that ultimately brings up more questions than it answers.

These additional questions leave readers wanting a bit more. Snicket is an unreliable narrator who doesn't seem to trust anyone- including the reader. While our first person narrator is undoubtedly the same Snicket who narrated A Series of Unfortunate Events, he is far less kind to himself than to the Baudelaire orphans, making it more difficult to like him. While Snicket leaves may mysteries unsolved-and therefore has me waiting for the next installment- I wish a little more had been resolved.