The Slippery Slope
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| The Slippery Slope | |
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| Author | Lemony Snicket (pen name of Daniel Handler) |
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| Illustrator | Brett Helquist |
| Cover artist | Brett Helquist |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | A Series of Unfortunate Events |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
| Publication date | September 23, 2003 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 337 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-06-441013-7 |
| Preceded by | The Carnivorous Carnival |
| Followed by | The Grim Grotto |
The Slippery Slope is the tenth installment in the book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Daniel Handler under the pseudonym of Lemony Snicket.
[edit] Plot summary
The book starts where The Carnivorous Carnival left off. Klaus and Violet are rolling down a steep mountainside in an out-of control caravan, while Sunny is held captive by Count Olaf and his henchmen. Violet devises a brake for the caravan by using the hammocks as a drag chute and spreading sticky stuff made from stuff they found in the caravan on the wheels. They have just gathered supplies and left the caravan, when it tips over the mountainside. The two siblings travel up the mountain and are attacked by snow gnats. They find shelter from the vicious insects in a cave, which is occupied by a recreational organization under the name of Snow Scouts. Carmelita Spats, the children's rival from The Austere Academy, is one of the Snow Scouts, along with her uncle Bruce and a boy wearing a sweater, who seems to possess knowledge about V.F.D. During the night, he talks to them and leads them up the natural chimney (also known as Vertical Flame Diversion) to the V.F.D. headquarters.
Olaf, his sidekicks, and Sunny are on the peak of Mount Fraught, the tallest mountain in the region. The adults are cruel to Sunny, forcing her to sleep in a casserole dish and cook them breakfast the next morning. She makes a meal described as "delicious", but Olaf believes it is disgusting and orders the Hook-Handed Man to fetch salmon from the water fall. Two people, the one described as a woman with hair but no beard, the other as a man with a beard but no hair, having "an aura of menace", and who are also acquaintances of Olaf arrive, and announce that they have successfully burned down the V.F.D. headquarters. They also give Count Olaf the rest of the Snicket File. The man gives Esmé a green cigarette which is actually a Verdant Flammable Device. Sunny notices Esmé's Verdant Flammable Device and has the idea to use one to signal her siblings under the pretext of smoking the just-caught salmon into lox for Olaf and his evil associates.
Meanwhile, down below the mountain, the siblings and the boy come to the V.F.D. headquarters and find it has burnt down. The boy reveals himself to be Quigley Quagmire, whom the children believed to be dead. Violet, Klaus, and Quigley see the plume of green smoke, being emitted from the Verdant Flammable Device, rising from the cliff. Violet invents a device for her and Quigley to climb up the steep cliff to find out who signaled them.To rest, Quigley and Violet sit on a ledge. When Quigley and Violet finish their climb and meet Sunny at the top, Violet wants Sunny to return with them, but she refuses, telling her sister that she can spy on Olaf and learn useful information. Violet reluctantly agrees, although she hesitates at first, saying that Sunny is only a baby. But after Sunny herself says, "I am not a baby," Violet agrees.
Upon meeting again, Violet, Quigley and Klaus hatch a plan to lure Esmé to them, trap her, and use her to bait Olaf into giving Sunny back. They dig a pit and light a Verdant Flammable Device next to it. Esmé sees some green smoke at the bottom of the slope. She goes down it, thinking the smoke is coming from the "in" cigarettes that she has now run out of. The children realize that two wrongs don't equal a right and that there is a better way to rescue Sunny than kidnapping Esmé. When she reaches the bottom, she runs into three masked strangers (the Baudelaires and Quigley), and they help her climb back up the slope, hoping to get Sunny as a reward for their efforts.
Claiming to be Volunteers, Violet, Klaus and Quigley demand Sunny's return. Olaf refuses, until Violet pretends to know the location of a missing sugar bowl (of unknown importance) from Esme's tea set. Olaf barters for the dish, but the Snow Scouts reach the peak. However, there is a trap that can put all of the scouts in a huge net. Klaus, Violet, and Quigley take off their masks to convince the scouts to run. Olaf orders the two white faced women to grab Sunny and throw her off the mountain, but they leave, quitting the troupe (before they leave, they tell Olaf that one of their siblings was killed when their house burned down). The Baudelaires and Quigley are too late as the scouts, except Carmelita, are taken up into the net, including the freaks and the hook-handed man, carried by eagles. As Carmelita is convinced to join Olaf and Esmé in their evil schemes, the Baudelaires and Quigley grab a sled and slide down the slope, but when they reach the bottom, the entire side of the slope breaks open, causing a waterfall. The Baudelaire siblings and Quigley Quagmire are separated. Quigley tries to tell them to meet him somewhere, but cannot be heard over the rush of the running water.
[edit] Cultural References, Trivia & Literary Allusions
- In the last picture of the book, there are a few mushrooms growing on the rocks echoing towards the next book in the series The Grim Grotto, where there is a deadly mushroom-like fungus.
- The mechanical instructor C. M. Kornbluth is named after the science fiction writer Cyril M. Kornbluth.
- There is a reference to Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot", when Sunny utters "Godot". The literal translation provided by Daniel Handler is "We don't know where to go, and we don't know how to get there.", much like the central plot in "Waiting for Godot" where the characters are unaware of the time that Godot will arrive.
- There is a reference to Monty Python's And Now For Something Completely Different, referring to the scene in which John Cleese is telling his class about how to defend themselves from someone armed with a "piece of fresh fruit." This is referenced to in The Slippery Slope wherein Violet, Klaus and Quigley search the fridge in order to find out if there is anything important. Snicket says that a fridge would hold a bunch of strawberries, which would be important if a man said "If you don't give me a bunch of strawberries right now, I'm going to attack you with this large pointed stick." Both the strawberries and the stick are a reference to Monty Python's And Now For Something Completely Different.
- As Violet, Klaus, and Quigley are climbing up the Vertical Flame Diversion, Snicket mentions that the pipes once found there were removed by a man he knew to build a submarine. This may be a reference to the next book in the series The Grim Grotto, in which the children reside in a submarine described as being made of different pipes.
- When the Baudelaires and Quigley are trying to find a way to escape from the top of Mount Fraught, Sunny says "Rosebud", prompting them to use the toboggan. This is a reference to the movie Citizen Kane. "Rosebud" is the first and last word in the movie, and the name of a sled that Kane owned when he was a child.
- Near the beginning of the book, Violet and Klaus get out of their costume. Yet in the "Hostile Hospital", Violet was in a hospital gown and since then had no time to change back into her normal clothes. During the course of the book, there is an illustration showing her in her normal clothes, but her they were in the hospital when it burned down, it is unknown how she got her violet dress back.
- At one point, Sunny uses the word "Busheney", which in the story means an evil, despicable man. The word is a reference of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
[edit] Translations
- Russian: "Скользкий склон", Azbuka, 2005, ISBN 5-352-01599-8
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