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The End (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 13) by Lemony Snicket
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Lemony Snicket Illustrator: Brett Helquist Illustrator: Michael Kupperman Edition: Hardcover Format: Bargain Price Published: 2006-10-13 ISBN: N/A Number of pages: 368 Reading Level: Ages 9-12 Publisher: HarperCollins
Book Reviews of The End (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 13)Book Review: Strangely Satisfying Summary: 5 StarsIt's a funny thing really-I finished this book and thought 'That's it?' and was almost prepared to chunk it. Till I waited about two minutes and felt like jumping up and down with excitement-realizng that this was actually an incredible book. I cannot claim to know all of the answers-but I do realize that most (if not all) of them can be found by reading the books c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y. I believe it was C.S. Lewis who said 'All the bother about originality is from people who aren't very original. If they were, they'd be original without noticing.' Snicket makes no great claims to be original. Yet he is-so masterfully you almost don't realize it. He manages to be funny and serious and heartrending (yes it was) all at the same time. Somehow, though alot of things weren't answered in this book...I found myself glad I had read it. After all, in life, are things always answered? No. Of course, you often read to escape life-but Snicket manages to make you appreciate it more. It's almost as though he's telling you 'Now you've had a nice little break. Go live. Do something. Change the world.' Though he himself would likely deny it vehemently. In conclusion to this (lengthy) review:
If you're expecting an all-out 'happy happy ending, everybody gets a pony and lives happily ever after', forget it. But remember: Snicket warned us at the beginning of the series. He flat-out told us the whole way through that this was a series of unfortunate events. Did we believe him? Noooo. We assumed he would tie everything up neatly like a mystery. But he didn't. He just stood back, halfway smiling, conveying the idea that we can figure it out. But really...do we need to?
This doesn't make sense. But if you've understood the series...you'll probably understand this review. I think.
It was a good book and deserves five stars. There.
Summary of The End (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 13)Picking up from the final pages of the Pentultimate Peril, this farewell installment to the ridiculously (and deservedly!) popular A Series of Unfortunate Events places our protagonists right where we last left them: on a large, wooden boat in the middle of the ocean, trapped with their nemesis Count Olaf, who has armed himself with a helmet-full of deadly Medusoid Mycelium. The situation quickly and--this being the Baudelaires--predictably deteriorates. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny find themselves tossed in a storm so terrible that our beloved narrator spends four pages describing how he cannot describe it. From this point on, fans of the series' smarty-pants wordplay and acrobatic narrative can rest assured that they're in for more of the same (and how) in this 368-page finale, and Daniel Handler's deadpan Snicket continues to tutor a generation in self-referential humor (including one particularly funny bit regarding three very short men carrying a large, flat piece of wood, painted to look like a living room). Snicket notes, of course, that if you read the entire series, "your only reward will be 170 chapters of misery in your library and countless tears in your eyes." There's one big question, though, for anyone who's made it through "the thirteenth chapter of the thirteenth volume in this sad history": is the final book a fitting end? That question is probably best-answered by one of The End's most oft-repeated phrases: It depends on how you look at it. Those looking for conclusive resolution to the series' many, many mysteries may be disappointed, although some big questions do get explicit answers. Not surprisingly for a work so deliberately labyrinthine, though, even the absence of an answer can be sort of an answer--and reaction to The End can be something of a Rorschach test for readers. Or, as Lemony Snicket says, "Perhaps you don't know yet what the end really means." --Paul Hughes
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