A book review.

"Fifty per cent of the things you recommend are absolutely rubbish," my friend Stewart said to me one day, "but the other fifty per cent are so good they're often life changing."
I think he was having a go at me - I think I'd recommended something he thought was rubbish - but I would say that fifty per cent is a pretty good strike rate. See, I was once someone who had to recommend things for a living, but I liked so many things that I was told not to recommend anything professionally any more. This was when I reviewed movies at The Guardian Guide, and my reviews were uniformly positive; thus readers of the paper couldn't really work out the things they were meant to see and which they weren't, and much money, they thought, was being wasted by them. For me, everything I recommended was in the 100% of things I liked, but the reader couldn't work out whether a particular film belonged in the 50% of things that were absolutely rubbish or the 50% that were so good they were life changing.
I felt sorry. Both for the Guide's readers for having wasted their money and for myself for having lost a job for being positive, but as I said, everything I saw I liked.

Now I mention this because I'm about to recommend something to you. Now you might go away and buy it, because, hey, it's a fifty-fifty chance, and you know, what the heck. But let me totally assure you it's going to be so totally worth your while to go and buy it. Honestly.

Oh, before I come onto it, one other quick point. One of the things my friend Stewart also says, when someone or something he likes becomes a life changing experience for the rest of us, is that he LIKED IT FIRST. He saw REM play at somewhere like Coventry Art College in about 1983, and that means that however much I like REM now, and they're a very likeable thing, he is cooler than me. Way cooler.

So here we go. The sequence of children's books called 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' is life-changing, and I mean this in a good way. They will make your life into a better thing than it was before.

But I do want you to realise that I liked them first. Now it's not for me to say that this makes me cooler than you, but secretly I think you know that it does. The way Stewart knows he's cooler than all of us because he liked REM when none of us others had ever heard of them. Even if you don't like REM, you've got to admire him for liking them first. And that's just an example. There are loads of other things he liked first, I just mentioned REM because they're pretty popular.

Anyway. 'A Series of Unfortunate Events'. Author, Lemony Snicket. You wait and see - within months the papers will all have articles about these books; the phrase 'a word which here means' will be the thing to drop into conversation, and grown adults will be racing each other through the set, grudgingly admiring those that have read more than them. They will be the next big crossover phenomenon (a word which here means 'the children's books that intelligent and respected adults will be talking about, and that you have to read too in order to be considered as cool as all the people who are talking about them.')

Cold cucumber soup, relatives who pick one up on one's bad grammar, itchy clothes, peppermint allergies - all the little things that can make an already unhappy life into one of abject misery; these are the subjects of Snicket's books. The Baudelaire orphans (inventive Violet, bookish Klaus and little Sunny who gurgles and bites things) are set on their miserable misadventures by the deaths of their parents in a fire, and by the complete uselessness of the family banker, Mr Poe, he with the constant cough. Afterwards, every step of their way is dogged by their evil uncle Count Olaf (aided by a group of dastardly accomplices from his terrible theatrical troupe) as he tries to get his hands on the Baudelaire fortune. Olaf's brilliant disguises fool all the adults, but never the children, and as they move on at the start of each new book, their woe, Olaf-related and general dolour, continues. They inhabit a weird semi-Dickensian present where pizza, TV and aeroplanes coexist with child labour, gothic buildings and constant gloomy weather.

It sounds depressing, but kids love this stuff. They share with the Harry Potter books the subjects of the freedom of orphans, adventures, wicked adults, gruesome accidents. And it has to be said they are very, very funny. The stories are as exciting as thrillers and beautifully structured, with little asides to the reader at the beginning of each chapter that seem obtuse at first but make delightful sense in context. All are dedicated to the mysterious, doomed Beatrice, and during the tales, little hints are dropped about the life of the shadowy Mr Snicket (he writes in a room overlooking a cemetery; he was once abandoned on a desert island with only his chauffeur for company; his friends include a socialist) letting the whole series build volume on volume into a twisted masterpiece. Thirteen instalments are planned, but only three have so far been published in the UK (America is up to the eighth book). Tim Curry narrates the audio books and, well, you can imagine what dark fun they are.

At the end of each book there is a letter from Snicket to his editor explaining how he has researched the subsequent unfortunate edition and left the manuscript in a very specific location, with instructions for illustrator Brett Helquist on how to best represent the misery that befalls the children. It's a nice touch that makes you want to rush on to the next story. And the books feel lovely to read; the pages are newly cut and although they're pretty short (190 pages or so) they do feel like part of your library the minute you buy them.

Oh and do check out the website too. The FAQ's and Topics for Discussion are sublime and there's an MP3 song all about Count Olaf by Stephen (69 Love Songs) Merritt: In the whole of / The soul of / Count Olaf / There's no love.

Now there are other writers I like and, if you go and enjoy the Unfortunate Events, you might like them too. Quite which fifty per cent of the things I like you think they should be placed in is a matter of your taste; you may very well think they're rubbish. In which case, sorry, but I did warn you at the beginning. But while we're here and I've got your attention, let me recommend the novels of Jonathan Lethem, Jonathan Carroll, Jack Womack and Mark Leyner (who my friend Dave liked first). And if you haven't read the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy by Philip Pullman, you should read that too.

Really though, I think you should go and check out Snicket's series. You'll like them, I just know you will, and you will be ahead of most people when they becomes huge, but the important thing to remember is this: that I liked them first.

A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS:

Written by LEMONY SNICKET
Illustrated by BRETT HELQUIST
Published by EGMONT BOOKS
Price: £5.99

WEBSITE: http://www.lemonysnicket.com

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