 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "The Grim Grotto" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(May 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
 | |
| Author | Lemony Snicket (pen name ofDaniel Handler) |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Brett Helquist |
| Cover artist | Brett Helquist |
| Language | English |
| Series | A Series of Unfortunate Events |
| Genre | Gothic fiction Absurdist fiction Mystery |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
Publication date | September 21, 2004 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 323 |
| ISBN | 0-06-441014-5 |
| OCLC | 55681958 |
| Preceded by | The Slippery Slope |
| Followed by | The Penultimate Peril |
Book the Eleventh: The Grim Grotto is the eleventh novel in thechildren's book seriesA Series of Unfortunate Events byLemony Snicket. The book was released on Tuesday, September 21, 2004.[citation needed] This novel tells the subsequent story of the Baudelaire orphans, who discover the crew of theQueequeg submarine searching for a mysterious sugar bowl in the eponymous grotto.
Having been separated fromQuigley Quagmire by the waterfall of the Mortmain Mountains, theBaudelaire children arrive at the hull of theQueequeg, a submarine piloted byCaptain Widdershins. They correctly guess the password, "the world is quiet here", and enter the porthole to meet Widdershins along with his stepdaughterFiona and the chef Cookie, who they recognise as the optimistPhil who used to work for the Lucky Smells Lumbermill (inThe Miserable Mill). Widdershins is a V.F.D. member and knew the Baudelaire parents; he talks with urgency but often gives contradicting instructions. He is traveling to the last safe place, the Hotel Denouement, but must first locate the sugar bowl, though he will not tell them what is inside.
Klaus examines thetidal charts to estimate that the sugar bowl is in the Gorgonian Grotto, but is interrupted bysonar detection of anoctopus-shaped submarine that they suspect is captained by Count Olaf. The submarine is chased away by the Great Unknown, which appears on the sonar as a question mark. Fiona, amycologist, discovers that the Gorgonian Grotto is home to the Medusoid Mycelium, a dangerous fungus which can kill within an hour of inhalation. As the grotto is conical, theQueequeg reaches a point where it is too wide to pass through, and instead the Baudelaire children and Fiona venture further in diving outfits. Reaching a beach, the children search through detritus in vain and are delayed in their return by the waxing and waning of Medusoid Mycelium. Sunny cooks a meal with ingredients on the beach, saving thewasabi for their return, as the others discover instructions for communicating with Verse Fluctuation Declaration, in which a message is hidden in a poem that has some of its words replaced.
On the children's return to the submarine, Widdershins and Phil are absent and Sunny is discovered to have been poisoned by Medusoid Mycelium.Count Olaf mounts theQueequeg and forces the children aboard his ship, theCarmelita. The ship is powered by the labor of kidnapped children such as the Snow Scouts, who are forced to watchCarmelita dance and sing. The Baudelaires and Fiona are taken to thebrig. The hook-handed man—Fernald—is responsible for watching them, but the Baudelaires learn that he is Fiona's brother. Fernald is ashamed of his decision to leave Widdershins and join Olaf's troupe many years ago. He will help them return to theQueequeg if he can join them.
The Baudelaires successfully sneak past Carmelita andEsmé, but Fiona and Fernald are caught and forced to stay, under the premise that Fiona has defected to join Olaf. Violet realizes that it is her fifteenth birthday as Klaus discovers thathorseradish is an antidote to the Medusoid Mycelium. Sunny calculates that wasabi should be a culinary equivalent and the wasabi from the beach is used to save her. Atelegram from Quigley instructs the Baudelaires to meet him on Briny Beach, after using Verse Fluctuation Declaration on an extract ofT.S. Eliot'sThe Waste Land.
Olaf discovers the Baudelaires' escape and rejoins them on theQueequeg. Fiona has defected to his troupe, genuinely this time. As he prepares to flee from the Great Unknown, which reappears on the radar, Fiona permits the Baudelaires to escape and gives Klaus a kiss goodbye. The children reach Briny Beach to findMr. Poe—just as they did on the day they learned of their parents' death—but they leave him behind to enter a taxi withKit Snicket at the wheel.
In the last picture ofThe Grim Grotto, Mr. Poe is seen waving to the Baudelaire orphans as they climb into a taxi. On the beach, there is a hat, half-buried in the sand, that reads "Hotel D------." The rest is in sand. This is a reference to the Hotel Denouement, the hotel fromThe Penultimate Peril.
The book was adapted into the third and fourth episodes of the third season of thetelevision series adaptation produced byNetflix.[1]
| A Series of Unfortunate Events |
| ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All the Wrong Questions | |||||||||
| Other works | |||||||||
| Related | |||||||||
