A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Vile Village

Book the seventh in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Vile Village is the pinnacle book where the heroes’ true misery and woe reveals itself and all former unfortunate events seem like “small potatoes.” 

Because misfortune seems to follow the Baudelaire children wherever they go, their relatives are refusing to take them in. So the children find themselves in a foster program that works by the aphorism “it takes a village to raise a child”. With three mysterious initials still on their minds, the Baudelaires choose to live in the village of V.F.D for the sole reason to find out if this village will harbour the treacherous secret that their kidnapped friends, the triplets Isadora and Duncan Quagmire, managed to tell them of before they were kidnapped by Count Olaf. But, during their stay in the village the children realise that they made a mistake and unfortunately before they can think of a plan, Count Olaf reappears with yet another dastardly plan to steal the Baudelaire fortune. 

Ok, I think I have finally worked out how to articulate what makes A Series of Unfortunate Events so different: the author is actually a fictional character, chronicling all these events that have “actually” happened (in the story). It’s a brilliant display of fiction being made into fact and fact being made into fiction and, to my knowledge, no other author has done anything like it. 

As I mentioned earlier, The Vile Village is the book where we get to the real meat of the series. I can’t really say too much without giving the entire thing away, but in this book, the misery and woe of the Baudelaire orphans is taken to a whole new level and it’s the book that brings an end to the basic structure of its predecessors: Baudelaires in the care of a new guardian and Count Olaf appears in another disguise. All the danger, and misery, and woe becomes even stronger, and a real sense of suspense and drama infuses the books from this point onwards. 

Filled with birds, Mexican food, tedious chores, bad hats, chest hair, drama, false accusations, and murder, The Vile Village is the seventh book in this wonderful series and it’s just as quick and easy to read, if not more so, as its predecessors.