Poison for Breakfast is such a delightful book! Well it’s odd to call it delightful if you consider that our author probably had poison for breakfast. But it’s delightful, well technically it’s bewildering.
This is book about a mystery, it’s also about death, it’s even about philosophy, but mainly it’s about bewilderment.
Poison for Breakfast starts like a classic Lemony Snicket book. A letter to his readers, telling us… no warning us about the book, giving us a choice to put it back down before proceeding further. But if you’ve read a Snicket before, of course you would not NOT read the book.
Snicket starts his day with making himself breakfast:
Tea
with honey,
a piece of toast
with cheese,
one slice pear,
and an egg perfectly prepared.
But this beautiful, wonderful morning turns into a horrid one after he discovers a piece of paper which says “you had poison for breakfast.”
This is a mystery book because you go on an adventure to discover who poisoned him & how?!
This is a book about death because most things philosophical are ultimately about death.
This book is about philosophy because you not only go on a mission to find the perpetrator of the poisoning but you also get an opportunity to read Snicket’s ramblings on various life experiences.
The book can be said to be a collection of short stories threaded together by the investigation of the author’s pre-assumed death and I had the best time reading it! While the book starts by creating a gloomy atmosphere, it is anything like it. It in fact makes you laugh & wonder, it feels like an understanding hug instead.
Poison for Breakfast by Lemony Snicket is a literary treat for all bibliophiles, of all ages! While a child may get the opportunity to be discover new words and phrases, adults have the opportunity to dig deeper into their understanding of them, they even get the opportunity to discover more books, songs, poems, etc!
As a bookworm, I loved every instance where he shared his love for books, libraries, librarians but especially his experiences as a reader, his experiences with books which are all too relatable as a literarian.
I’d like to thank Harper Collins India for sending across a review copy of the book, having said that all views on this book are my own and is not affected by the above stated fact.
