The Hostile Hospital

The Hostile Hospital is the eighth novel of the A Series of Unfortunate Events series by Lemony Snicket.

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  US Cover
• UK cover
  UK cover

The Recurring Themes

• Border: An electrocardiogram
• Ex Libris: Shows the Baudelaires and an intercom, behind which hides Count Olaf, disguised as Mattathias, Head of Human Resources
• Final image: The Baudelaires are hidden in the trunk of Count Olaf's car, and there's a crystal ball and a magazine with a hand drawed, that adverts "Madame Lulu". Madame Lulu and the crystal ball reappear in The Carnivorous Carnival.

Plot

At the start of the book, we meet up with Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire as they arrive at the Last Chance General Store on the run from the police and residents of the Village of Fowl Devotees. They are falsely accused of murdering Jacques Snicket at the end of the previous book. They send a telegram from the store to Mr. Poe seeking help, but he doesn't reply before the delivery of The Daily Punctilio forces the reported murderers to flee once more. Picked up by the Volunteers Fighting Disease bus, they reach Heimlich Hospital and get jobs with Hal in the library. At night, they are forced to sleep in the unfinished half of the Hospital where it's cold and damp. Reviewing the few pages of the commonplace books they received from the two Quagmire triplets, they discover the existence of the Snicket File. They play a trick on Hal to try to get it, but only succeed in retrieving the 13^th page, which reads

Due to the evidence discussed on page 9, experts now suspect that there may in fact be one survivor of the fire, but the survivor's whereabouts are unknown.

At this point, Esmé Squalor walks in and chases them for the file. Klaus and Sunny escape down a chute but Violet is too big and gets caught. Mattathias (who is actually Count Olaf posing as the Human Resources manager at the Hospital) informs the hospital on the intercom that Klaus and Sunny are in the building. They hide in the broom closet and find out (by use of anagrams) where the villains plan to give their sister an unwanted "Crainioectomy". They disguise themselves as the "two powder-faced women", regular assistants of Count Olaf, in order to get into the operating theatre. Although they briefly stall the operation, Hal "exposes" them. They are rounded upon and Violet wakes up. Esmé has set fire to the Library and it's spreading. The three children hide in another closet and escape through a window after diverting the crowd to the Unfinished half of the Hospital. They hide in the trunk of Count Olaf's car while he escapes with most of his villainous assistants, but the "person of indeterminate gender" is burnt to a crisp.

This book contains a literary reference to Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.