7.8 /10 1 Votes
Cover artist Brett Helquist Language English Publication date February 25, 2000 Illustrator Brett Helquist | 3.9/5 Goodreads Country United States Publisher HarperCollins Originally published 2 February 2000 Page count 214 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (hardback & paperback) Characters Count Olaf, Violet Baudelaire, Klaus Baudelaire, Sunny Baudelaire, Josephine Anwhistle Genres Gothic fiction, Absurdist fiction, Steampunk, Mystery Similar Daniel Handler books, A Series of Unfortunate Events books, Mystery books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Wide Window is the third in the children's novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. It was later released in paperback under the name The Wide Window; or, Disappearance! In The Wide Window, the Baudelaire orphans are sent to live with their third guardian, Aunt Josephine, who lives on a house overlooking Lake Lachrymose.
Contents
Plot summary
Shortly after the events of The Reptile Room, Mr. Poe puts the Baudelaire orphans, Klaus, Sunny and Violet under the care of Aunt Josephine, who lives in a house atop a hill overlooking Lake Lachrymose, a lake so large that hurricanes have occurred in that area. Aunt Josephine, despite being a good-hearted elder, lives an unusual lifestyle of having phobias of almost everything from cooking food to her welcome mat.
While helping Aunt Josephine with shopping in the grocery store, Violet literally runs into a sailor named "Captain Sham", who she concludes is secretly Count Olaf in disguise. Aunt Josephine declines to believe this due to Captain Sham's apparently charming personality. That night, the children hear a crash and find out that their new guardian had jumped out of the Wide Window that overlooks Lake Lachrymose, and that before doing so left a note for them informing them that Captain Sham will be their new guardian.
Despite relating their suspicions to Mr. Poe that the note was a forgery by Count Olaf, he again refuses to believe them, thus they are forced to have dinner with Mr. Poe and Count Olaf at a cheap and grimy restaurant called the Anxious Clown. Needing a distraction to come up with a strategy, Violet puts peppermints in her own food and that of Klaus and Sunny. Allergic, they break into hives, forcing Count Olaf to allow them to go back to their aunt's house. Klaus shows them how Aunt Josephine had written the note, due to the handwriting, but purposely made grammar mistakes to make a hidden message, which are the two words 'Curdled Cave'. Once they finish the note, Hurricane Herman hits and the house begins to fall apart into the sea. The Wide Window shatters and plunges into the lake. They retreat to the front of the house when that part of the house falls into the lake.
With this information, the Baudelaire orphans travel by foot to Captain Sham's boat store near Lake Lachrymose to steal a boat to get to Curdled Cave while another hurricane strikes. Upon arriving at Captain Sham's store for boats, they encounter one of Count Olaf's henchmen, a large person of indeterminate gender whom they encountered in the first book as well. After Sunny steals the keys to the boats, they suddenly wake up but fail to capture them, so the children are able to sail to the cave. They finally endure the storm and reach the Curdled Cave, where Aunt Josephine reveals that Count Olaf forced her to write the note, and he had simply broken the Wide Window to cause them to believe that she had committed suicide.
While traveling back, Lachrymose leeches attempt to suck their blood due to smelling food in Aunt Josephine's stomach since she ate a banana under the one hour limit. They are able to send a signal for help, but only Count Olaf arrives in a ship. After leaving Aunt Josephine to be eaten by the leeches, he brings the children back to the house, where Sunny is able to prove that he was Count Olaf to Mr. Poe by biting off Count Olaf's fake wooden peg to reveal his eye tattoo underneath. He and his henchperson escape and lock the Baudelaire Orphans and Mr. Poe in the gate of the house, and when they get out of the gate the convicts have already escaped, leaving Mr. Poe to look for a new guardian for the Baudelaires.
Foreshadowing
On the side of a building in the picture hangs a sign in the shape of a pair of glasses with a pair of squinting eyes, referencing Dr. Orwell's Office in The Miserable Mill
Disappearance!
A Series of Unfortunate Events No.3: The Wide Window or, Disappearance! is a paperback re-release of The Wide Window, designed to mimic Victorian penny dreadfuls. It was released on September 4, 2007. The book includes seven new illustrations, and the third part of a serial supplement entitled The Cornucopian Cavalcade, which features a 13-part comic by Michael Kupperman entitled The Spoily Brats, an advice column written by Lemony Snicket, and, as in The Bad Beginning or, Orphans! and The Reptile Room or, Murder!, (the final) part of a story by Stephen Leacock entitled Q: A Psychic Pstory of the Psupernatural. This edition was the last of the paperback rereleases of the series - there have not been any more of these as of this edit for unknown reasons.
Translations
Adaptations
Elements of The Wide Window were featured in the 2004 film adaptation of the first three books in the series, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. The book was adapted into the fifth and sixth episodes of the first season of the television series adaptation produced by Netflix. In the film, Meryl Streep portrays the children's new guardian aunt Josephine, while Alfre Woodard portrays the character in the TV series.