Book #77 of 2020:
Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights? by Lemony Snicket (All the Wrong Questions #4)
I’ve been somewhat lukewarm on this prequel series, but it goes out on a suitably climactic high note, with most of the action confined to the tight spaces of a speeding train. Lemony Snicket the author provides some of his sharpest writing yet, and young Lemony Snicket the protagonist comes to a few important realizations about himself, his associates, and the larger plot in which he’s been embroiled. Ultimately this quartet of novels never really provides the Unfortunate Events backstory that I want from it, yet it’s a generally solid middle-grade spy adventure and a fine character piece for its hero.
(Since the title of this last volume is a reference to the four questions traditionally recited at a Passover seder, I moved it up in my reading queue to just before the holiday. However, there’s not much here that resonates with the Exodus narrative. Still, Snicket the author is Jewish — and has mentioned in interviews that “by default, the characters I create are Jewish, I think” — and I appreciate that a stated goal in this book is to repair the world, an echoing of Judaism’s ethical concept of tikkun olam.)
This book: ★★★★☆
Overall series: ★★★☆☆
Individual rankings: 4 > 2 > 3 > 1
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