The Vile Village
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| Author | Lemony Snicket (pen name of Daniel Handler) |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Brett Helquist |
| Cover artist | Brett Helquist |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | A Series of Unfortunate Events |
| Genre |
Gothic fiction Absurdist fiction Steampunk Mystery |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
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Publication date
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May 2001 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 256 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | The Ersatz Elevator |
| Followed by | The Hostile Hospital |
The Vile Village is the seventh novel in the children's book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket (the pen name of American author Daniel Handler), which consists of 13 children's novels that follow the turbulent lives of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire after their parents' death. The children are placed in the custody of their distant cousin/uncle Count Olaf, who attempts to steal their inheritance. After the Baudelaires are removed from his care by their parents' estate executor, Mr. Poe, Olaf begins to doggedly hunt the children down, bringing about the serial slaughter and demise of a multitude of characters.
In The Vile Village, the Baudelaire orphans are taken into the care of a whole village, only to find lots of rules and chores, evil seniors, as well Count Olaf and his evil girlfriend lurking nearby.
This book marks a turning point in the structure of the series and effective marks the halfway mark between books one to six and eight to thirteen. It breaks with the following major patterns of the earlier books in the series:
The book begins with the Baudelaires in Mr. Poe's office, awaiting a new guardian. Mr. Poe gives a brochure to the Baudelaire orphans about a new program allowing an entire village to serve as guardian, based on the saying "It takes a village to raise a child." The children choose V.F.D., an acronym to which Duncan and Isadora Quagmire referred before they could explain further during their kidnap by Count Olaf and his acting friends (in the Austere Academy). The children depart for the unknown V.F.D. by bus, and after a long, hot and dusty walk from the bus stop, they reach the town of V.F.D., which is filled with crows. They become acquainted with the Council of Elders, who proclaims that the children will do all the chores for the entire village, but they will be living with Hector, the handyman, who takes them to his home, where he shows them the house, the barn and the Nevermore Tree, where all the crows come to roost at night. The Baudelaires learn that V.F.D. stands for the Village of Fowl Devotees. Hector shows the Baudelaires the following couplet, which he says was found at the base of Nevermore Tree:
For sapphires we are held in here,
Only you can end our fear.
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Wikipedia