Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Biography, by Lemony Snicket (HarperCollins, 2002)

After reading the Unauthorized Biography of Lemony Snicket, the author responsible for giving us the infamously depressing, tongue-in-cheek Series of Unfortunate Events, I find myself rather more confused than when I began, filled with questions I not only didn’t have before, but never even suspected I should be asking, such as “What is the V.F.D” and “What’s up with the talking cow” and “If there’s nothing out there, what was that noise?” This, I suspect, is all part of a cunning plan perpetrated either by Lemony Snicket, or a non-existent secret organization which will probably replace this review anyway.

Combining misdirection, outright falsehood, layers of complex secrecy, cunningly coded messages, letters which may mean something else entirely, unhelpful photographs, questionable transcripts, and excerpts from random books, the Unauthorized Biography attempts to unravel the mysteries of Lemony Snicket’s birth (not on a cattle farm), death (he’s not really dead), whereabouts (on the run), association with the V.F.D (which doesn’t exist) and relationship with the unlucky Baudelaire children (see Unfortunate Events, Series of) (see Lemony Snicket, books by) (see Science Fiction Chronicle, July 2002 issue, previous review column).

Ultimately, I concluded that while entertaining and misleading, this book serves absolutely no productive purpose, and is likely some sort of trick, and that the real Unauthorized Biography of Lemony Snicket was stolen while at press and replaced by this hilarious, clever parody of “real” unauthorized biographies. As a spoof on the genre, and an amusing addition to the Series of Unfortunate Events, it’s something people with a sense of humor might like, if their sense of humor extended to sly self-aware books aimed at people with a sense of humor. Of course, this review might have been written by a member of a secret organization, and thus suspect. (Translation: I enjoyed this book, and I believe those who have enjoyed Snicket’s previous offerings will be entertained, though it does not lend itself well to being read aloud, and is as much a visual entertainment as a literary one.)


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