Skip to main content

Poison for Breakfast - Lemony Snicket

 



Genre: Is Lemony Snicket a Genre? 

Release Date: Expected 2nd September 2021

Publisher: Oneworld Publications | Rock The Boat 

It all starts with breakfast; tea with honey, toast with cheese, a sliced pear, an egg.

After breakfast, Mr Snicket finds a lone scrap of paper informing him he'd had poison for breakfast. But rather than patiently waiting for his demise, he decides to investigate where this unwanted ingredient could have come from and sets off to track down some tea and honey ...  

In that trademark Lemony Snicket style, which is almost a genre of its own at this point, Poison for Breakfast, is a delightfully absurd story for curious readers of any age. Full of the trademark expressions and prose I've come to love and expect, a strangely familiar sense of foreboding and a unique twist, this didn't fail to live up the reputation of Mr Snicket.

A quick read, this was the perfect length. Especially seeing as instead of a story, per se, this is more like a long string of thoughts being told haphazardly to the reader, feeling totally incoherent and making perfect sense at the same time. There is no dramatic climax or shock reveal to wait for, just a steady stream to follow to the end until the story drifts off into the distance. 

During our authors journey to find out why he has been poisoned, he thinks about life, about death, about strangers, friends and enemies and about the wonder of simply existing. Raising questions about morals and philosophy, and making some excellent insight into how completely strange it is to be a writer of all things. 

Poison for Breakfast was thirteen chapters of sublimity - a word which here means being wickedly clever, surreal and so very fun.

GENRE: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to Lemony Snicket, Oneworld Publications and Netgalley for this ARC in return for an honest review. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

REVIEW: This Could Be Us by Clare McGowan

Genre: Fiction | Literary Fiction Release Date: Expected 1st June 2023 Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group | Corsair  Kate has done the unthinkable. She'd worked hard to build a perfect life for herself, while ignoring her growing unhappiness. But when her second child was born profoundly disabled, reality hit. Unable to cope, Kate left - disappearing without a trace. She ends up in LA, with a glittering career and a new family of sorts, but the guilt is still suffocating. Husband Andrew was left to pick up the pieces and care for their disabled daughter and angry, confused son. Bereft and broken, he leaned on Olivia, Kate's best friend. She's been by his side ever since, ignoring her own needs to meet his. Years later, Andrew has written a memoir about his daughter learning to communicate against all odds. But when Kate's new producer husband decides he wants to make a film of it, their worlds collide once again. Now, Kate must return to the life she abandoned and reck...

REVIEW: Live, Laugh, Lesbian by Helen Scott

Genre: Non-Fiction | Memoir | LGTBQ+  Release Date: 19th October 2023 Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Part memoir, part guide, part conversation and all queer joy — Live, Laugh, Lesbian is a brilliantly warm and friendly journey into the queer experience, not only from the author but from plenty of other lesbian, queer, bisexual and pansexual contributors who bring a unique viewpoint and voice and also show a beautiful diverse, intersectional scope of the queer spectrum and welcomes in queer people and allies of any kind to come feel the love. The book is very conversational, talking to the reader in a fun, friendly way — at times I rolled my eyes as the use of “famalam” but as a previous patron of Colours and Chicagos I’m not in a position to judge the Essex-isms. It’s full of anecdotes and observations that were witty and relatable as well as talking is through the more difficult side of queerness like dealing with workplace discrimination, religious trauma and coming out to family...

BOOK TOUR STOP x RANDOM THINGS TOURS: Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen

  " This town has secrets that are best left alone." Author Hannah is a success, on paper at least. She's receiving critical acclaim and praise worldwide and her work is regarded as some of the best. She writes literature, not just books. But the reality is, outside of the literary circles nobody actually reads her work. But when she finally snaps at a book event and publicly criticises the genre fiction books that outsell hers, claiming they're easy and mindless she's challenged to write her own crime fiction novel in just thirty days by an author she loathes. Desperate not to lose to him, her editor arranges for her to spend a month in a quiet, cold village in Iceland hoping that the solitude will spark inspiration.  But instead of writing a murder story - she's in one . Just before she arrives, the body of a young man is pulled from the icy waters and her search for ideas soon becomes a search for a killer. And if she's not careful, she might end up the...