Just when you think things are getting better for the Baudelaires, all you need to do is turn the page and presto, another ghastly calamity befalls them. Grown-ups tend to misunderstand the mindset of the series and gasp, horrified, “But it’s so unremittingly bleak! Only terrible things happen!” So true. This is pre-gothic tragicomedy at its best, and you only have to read this one (or the first book in the series, The Bad Beginning, where the children’s parents perish in an unfortunate fire, and are sent to live with the nefarious Count Olaf, a distant relative and all-around baddie) or mention the movie to get readers clamoring for the other 12 witty titles about the disaster-prone Baudelaire siblings, Violet, Klaus, and baby Sunny. The prissy pseudonymous author, who loves to lecture the reader on the meaning of difficult words in long-winded and convoluted detail, takes great pride in the plucky orphans, for whom everything can only go tragically (or comically, depending on how warped your sense of humor is) wrong. Truth be told, within the chapters that make up this dreadful story, the children will face snapping crabs, strict punishments, dripping fungus. For the Baudelaires, school turns out to be another miserable episode in their unlucky lives.

If you are looking for a story about cheerful youngsters spending a jolly time at boarding school, look elsewhere.

On the back cover is a letter from the dyspeptic narrator stating, in part: In Book the Fifth of the melodramatic but farcical and vocabulary-enhancing saga of the unremittingly unfortunate Baudelaire siblings, 'A Series of Unfortunate Events,” the three orphans are sent to Prufrock Prep, a dreadful boarding school whose uplifting motto is 'Memento Mori' (Latin for “remember you will die”).

The austere academy by lemony snicket