| The Wide Window |
"If you haven't got the stomach for a story that includes a hurricane, a signaling device, hungry leeches, cold cucumber soup, a horrible villain, and a doll named Pretty Penny, then this book will probably fill you with despair." The third volume of A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS by Lemony Snicket begins with the Baudelaire orphans being sent to live with their Aunt Josephine. Josephine is afraid of bizarre things like doorknobs, ovens, and telephones, and therefore all food is cold, among other things. She is a grammar freak and expects impeccable grammar from all the children; even Sunny, who is pre-verbal because of being a BABY, is not excused from this. Aunt Josephine lives on a high mountain and is deathly afraid of almost everything outside, but somehow she is not afraid of Count Olaf when she meets him in his disguise of "Captain Sham." (This cannot be said for the Baudelaires; he frightens them quite a bit, even in his pirate-like guise as he attempts to woo Aunt Josephine.) Olaf slimes his way into the house and shares his mistyped business cards, revealing his bad grammar. And later, during a hurricane, Josephine is kidnapped, though Olaf forces her to write a pretend suicide note to explain her disappearance. Purposely making lots of grammatical errors, she is able to get a message to the children, which Klaus decodes, and the three children attempt to rescue her from the water-soaked cave where she is being held. Unfortunately she does not survive the ordeal, though that is expected because the author tells you she won't about halfway through. And of course the Baudelaires narrowly escape, and so does Olaf.
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