A review by morningtide
The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket

adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

With each book in this series, I'm appreciating more and more that at the heart of it, we are learning along with the Baudelaires to just... cope. In The Wide Window, the theme is definitely coping - Aunt Josephine as their new guardian, who as one of the more well-meaning ones has still not learned to deal with her own grief and loss of her husband, causing her to let the children and herself fall into the clutches of Count Olaf. I found the mystery in this one to be quite a bit of fun - and to have the children solve it only to have Aunt Josephine continue to be ridiculous. But despite her weakness of falling too far into her grief and fear, the children still love her and do not seem to blame her too much for her struggles, as silly as they can seem.

Violet opened the peeling white door, and there stood Mr. Poe in the gloomy light of dawn. "Mr. Poe," Violet said. She intended to tell him immediately of their forgery theory, but as soon as she saw him, standing in the doorway with a white handkerchief in one hand and a black briefcase in the other, her words stuck in her throat. Tears are curious things, for like earthquakes or puppet shows they can occur at any time, without any warning and without any good reason. "Mr. Poe," Violet said again, and without any warning she and her siblings burst into tears. Violet cried, her shoulders shaking with sobs, and Klaus cried, the tears making his glasses slip down his nose, and Sunny cried, her open mouth revealing her four teeth. Mr. Poe put down his briefcase and put away his handkerchief. He was not very good at comforting people, but he put his arms around the children the best he could, and murmured "There, there," which is a phrase some people murmur to comfort other people despite the fact that it doesn't really mean anything.

 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Transphobia

There are scenes (mainly in Ch. 9) where the henchperson of indeterminate gender is spoken of in a way that feels a lot less about how evil they are and more about their indeterminate gender - they get referred to as "it" in a way that feels gross and are talked about more as a monster than a human. All of Olaf's henchpeople are monsters, obvs - but these particular moments did not age very well. I do believe the author apologized for this and did better in the TV series, but it did very much remind me this book is from 2000.