When Life Gives You Lemony Snicket

“If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.” So Daniel Handler, writing as the enigmatic Lemony Snicket, begins A Series of Unfortunate Events, his inordinately successful sequence of children’s books, which have sold 60 million copies and left me, aged 12, utterly captivated. It is an early marker of just how well Handler understands the minds of children, because few things are going to entice a young reader to embark on a 13-book series more than a warning not to bother.