A Series of Unfortunate Events: The End

Book the thirteenth and final chronicle in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, The End has to be the most confusing and mysterious book of the series. 

Having escaped from the fire at the Hotel Denouement, the Baudelaire children once again find themselves trapped in the company of the notorious villain, Count Olaf, but this time their circumstances are so perilous and frightening that the wicked villain is the least of the children’s troubles. After getting caught in a terrible storm, Violet, Klaus, Sunny, and Olaf become shipwrecked castaways on an island inhabited by a peaceful colony. For a while, it seems that the children have finally found safety and security, away from the villains and secrets of the world, but they soon learn that the island and its strange facilitator have a few secrets of its own; secrets and a few answers that the Baudelaires have been searching for for quite some time. 

It’s natural for people to make their way through a series and expect some kind of great and finite closure at the end of it all, but Lemony Snicket’s final book in the series has to be the only concluding book that I have read that, not only doesn’t really have closure, but makes you much more confused than when you started reading it. The simple basic structure of the earlier books has been completely discarded: beginning = introduction, middle = complication, and end = solution, and replaced with not so much a structure, but a mass of words and vague plot that harbours more secrets and complications than solutions. It’s actually really interesting and a good read in that way, simply for the fact that it goes against peoples’ expectations of what is to be found in a concluding book. 

The End is confusing for two reasons: the first it that of which I have already mentioned, and the second is that there are long-winded bouts of almost incoherent explanation about life’s great mysteries and such, and these are written almost as tongue twisters and mind-meddlers. It takes on a sort of “this is actually the beginning and not the end of the end because the end could be actually the beginning of a new story which is actually the middle because there is no real end” type thing. Do you see what I mean? My brain hurts. It is clever though. 

Filled with secrets, mysteries, bland dishes, detritus, a familiar face, mutiny, and schisms, The End is a great way to conclude the series: standing on the edge of the great unknown. It’s easy to read and really makes your mind work.