Poison for Breakfast by Lemony Snicket

Poison for Breakfast

by Lemony Snicket

In the years since this publishing house was founded, we have worked with an array of wondrous authors who have brought illuminating clarity to our bewildering world. Now, instead, we bring you Lemony Snicket.

Over the course of his long and suspicious career, Mr. Snicket has investigated many things, including villainy, treachery, conspiracy, ennui, and various suspicious fires. In this book, he is investigating his own death.

Poison for Breakfast is a different sort of book than others we have published, and from others you may have read. It is different from other books Mr. Snicket has written. It could be said to be a book of philosophy, something almost no one likes, but it is also a mystery, and many people claim to like those. Certainly Mr. Snicket didn’t relish the dreadful task of solving it, but he had no choice. It was put in front of him, right there, on his plate.

Reviewed by Quirky Cat on

4 of 5 stars

Share

He's back! Lemony Snicket is back with another book, this time titled Poison for Breakfast. If you're a fan of the winding and unique writing style, the odds are good that you'll happily dive into this read.

There are many things Lemony Snicket does on a given day. Write entertaining tales, create whimsical thoughts, etc. It all starts with one of his favorite routines: breakfast. The great Lemony Snicket always starts off his day with the same meal.

That is, until one day, he gets a note informing him of a special little additive to his morning meal: poison. While this description may make the story sound larger than life, Lemony Snicket promises that the tale is entirely true.

“Happiness, in my experience, is like a bowl of bananas, because if you pay too much attention, it gets gobbled away, but if you forget all about it, either a robber steals it or it ends up rotten mush. It can be tricky to keep one’s happiness intact, and the interference of a supermarket strikes me as someone offering a badly cracked bowl into which to store one’s happy bananas.”

Words cannot express my absolute delight at finding Poison for Breakfast in my mailbox one day. I haven't read a Lemony Snicket novel since A Series of Unfortunate Events, so this was quite the walk down memory lane – one that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Nostalgia aside, I found Lemony Snicket's series of adventures to be pretty compelling. Not only was I inquisitive about the true tale of a poisoned meal, but I loved all of the references woven into the narrative. This book is very much an exploration of literary love, one that could only ever have come from an author's mind. Specifically, it could only ever have come from the mind of Lemony Snicket.

The writing style was somewhat different than I expected – it reads as more of a stream of consciousness than anything thoroughly planned out. Yet I think this fact is the very reason why I enjoyed it so much. It was such an organic read, with all of these twists, turns, and comical tangents.

Check out more reviews over at Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

Last modified on

Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 30 August, 2021: Finished reading
  • 30 August, 2021: Reviewed