The Grim Grotto

The Grim Grotto
Author(s)	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(s)	Gothic fiction Absurdist fiction Steampunk Mystery
Publisher	HarperCollins
Publication date	September 21, 2004
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	323
ISBN	0-06-441014-5
OCLC Number	55681958
Preceded by	The Slippery Slope
Followed by	The Penultimate Peril

The Grim Grotto is the eleventh novel in the children's novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket.

Plot

The book begins where The Slippery Slope left off, with the Baudelaires traveling on a collapsing toboggan down the Stricken Stream of the Mortmain Mountains, leaving Quigley Quagmire floating in the opposite direction. They are washed into the ocean where they are caught on a submarine. They enter the submarine, which they discover is the Queequeg captained by Captain Widdershins, a V.F.D. member and old friend of the Baudelaire parents. Also on board is Widdershins' stepdaughter Fiona and the ship's cook, Phil, the Baudelaire's optimistic past fellow worker at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill. The Baudelaires discover that the crew of the Queequeg are searching for the mysterious sugar bowl.

Klaus examined the tidal charts to estimate the location of the sugar bowl given the water cycle. He suspects it to be in the Gorgonian Grotto. An approaching submarine vessel on the sonar, in the shape of an octopus, captained by Count Olaf, but it is driven off by a mysterious ship which appears on the radar in the form of a question mark, which Captain Widdershins seems afraid of.

Fiona then looks in her mycological textbooks to discover information about the Gorgonian Grotto. It is a cone-shaped cave which houses a rare species of poisonous mushroom. They wax and wane periodically, but when the mushrooms are waxing, they are extremely deadly. The grotto is remote enough that it can quarantine the Medusoid Mycelium from the outside world. Fiona suspects there may be an antidote to the poisonous effects of the fungus. Over dinner, the Baudelaire's discuss everything that they have learned from their journey so far. Widdershins mentions the Snicket siblings, who fought on the side of good. Jacques Snicket, whom the children saw murdered in the Village of Fowl Devotees, was a researcher similar to Klaus; Kit Snicket, who helped build the Queequeg; and before Widdershins mentions the third Snicket Sibling, Fiona interrupts him, wanting to know about the VFD Headquarters the children had been too.

When the submarine arrives at the Grotto, Fiona, Klaus, Violet and Sunny are sent in. Inside it is filled with mainly junk, but also the breeding ground of the Medusoid Mycelium. While they are waiting for the Medusoid Mycelium to wane again, the children occupy themselves by investigating the knick-knacks lying around the cave, many of which seem to be connected to the V.F.D. Sunny picks up a tube of wasabi sauce.

On returning to the submarine, they discover that Widdershins and Phil have mysteriously disappeared, with no sign of where they have gone. They also discover that a spore of the mushroom has infiltrated Sunny's helmet while in the grotto. Fiona stops Klaus from opening the helmet, insisting that Sunny must remain in the helmet for their safety until she can find an antidote. Just as the ship starts up, Olaf's submarine returns and he comes down to the children and tells them that he has been at the Hotel Denouement preparing for his final scheme, but he needed to find the sugar bowl to complete his plans. The orphans enter Olaf's ship and are taken to the brig where they are interrogated by the hook-handed man, who is revealed to be Fiona's brother - Fernald. Fiona begs him to help them get back to the Queequeg, for Sunny's sake, and Fernald finally agrees on the condition that they take him along.

Back on the Queequeg, Sunny is very close to death. Klaus and Violet read Fiona's texts and realize that the antidote is horseradish. Violet and Klaus begin to break down but have enough courage to open up the helmet containing Sunny, and Sunny saves her own life when she manages to blurt out one word, the culinary equivalent of horseradish: wasabi - what Sunny took from the grotto.

While Sunny recovers, the telegram machine starts back up again. The Voluntary Factual Dispatch they receive is from Quigley Quagmire, Quigley needs the Baudelaires at a certain coded location the next day, and just two days before the meeting at the Hotel. Klaus is first to solve the riddle: Quigley will meet them at Briny Beach. As Violet begins decoding the other part, they are discovered by Olaf and accomplices. Olaf announces triumphantly that they are just minutes from the Hotel Denouement and Fiona has joined his team to be with Fernald. Shortly after, on the radar, the mysterious question mark ship appears again. Olaf clearly knows what it is, as he orders everyone to battle stations to flee. Fiona, knowing that she has made the wrong decision, allows the Baudelaires to escape in the Queequeg.

The next day they arrive on Briny Beach - back where all of their troubles began. Surprisingly, Mr. Poe emerges from the fog. He received a message from the mysterious J.S. - whom he assumes is The Daily Punctilio's reporter Geraldine Julienne - that he had to meet them at the beach. He tells the children to come with him to the police station to resolve all of their troubles. Violet, however, has Quigley's decoded the message and has concluded that a taxi will be at the beach for them, and she sees it. They arrive at the taxi to find a woman at the wheel that they have never seen before and the woman reveals herself to be Kit Snicket and the children climb into the taxi where they drive off to the Hotel Denouement.

Foreshadows

• On the last picture, there is a concierge's cap on the beach, foreshadowing The Penultimate Peril.
• Sunny says etartsigam which is magistrate backwards. This could be a foreshadow of The Penultimate Peril in which two villains are unjust members of Justice Strauss's jury.

Cultural references and literary allusions

• Queequeg is a character in Moby-Dick, and the face of Herman Melville appears on the submarine's uniforms.
• In another reference to Moby-Dick, Brett Helquist's portrait depicts him as a man similar to Captain Ahab with a scar on the side of his face, a whaling harpoon and a peg-leg, as described in Melville's novel.
• Throughout the novel, there are constant jibes at Edgar Guest's lack of talent.
• While in the grotto, Violet Baudelaire finds a rock, its description closely resembles the Rosetta stone.
• Sunny uses foreign words in this book:
  • Yom Huledet, which means birthday in Hebrew.
  • Shalom, which means peace and is used for hello or goodbye in Hebrew.
  • Cuisi- Sunny was about to say "cuisine" which means kitchen in French.
• Three poems are mentioned involving the Verse Fluctuation Declaration:
  • Robert Browning's My Last Duchess
  • Lewis Carroll's The Walrus and the Carpenter
  • T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land

Translations

• Brazilian Portuguese: "A Gruta Gorgônea", Cia das Letras
• Czech: "Ponurá sluj"
• Finnish: "Synkkä syöveri" (The Grim Whirlpool), WSOY, 2006, ISBN 951-0-31491-9
• Greek: "Η Σπαρακτική Σπηλιά", Ελληνικά Γράμματα
• Russian: "Угрюмый Грот", Azbuka, 2006, ISBN 2-352-01790-7

See also

• Violet Baudelaire
• Klaus Baudelaire
• Sunny Baudelaire
• Count Olaf
• Lemony Snicket
• Esmé Squalor
• Captain Widdershins
• Fiona (A Series of Unfortunate Events)
• Phil (A Series of Unfortunate Events)
• Carmelita Spats
• Hook-handed man
• Count Olaf's theater troupe
• Sugar bowl (A Series of Unfortunate Events)
• Great Unknown (A Series of Unfortunate Events)
• V.F.D.