Author: Alan Bradley
Published: 2009
Publisher: Bantam
Series: ‘Flavia de Luce’ #1
373 pages (paperback)
So I’m reading this series a bit backwards since I already read the second book before I read this one, but lucky for me, this isn’t the kind of series where you must read them in order since each book can stand as its own story.
The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie is the first novel with our dear protagonist Flavia, and if I’m not mistaken, the author’s first mystery novel. Flavia is a brilliant 11 year old girl, living in the 1950’s, with a passion for chemistry. Her mother, Harriet, died when she was a baby, and so it is just her, her two sisters Daphne and Ophelia (who seem to despise Flavia) and their stamp-collecting-obsessed father. On a seemingly ordinary day, their housekeeper finds a dead bird on their doorsteps, a stamp pierced through its beak. Next thing you know, Flavia is stumbling into a dead body in their cucumber garden! Rather than screaming her head off and running away like you would imagine an eleven year old girl to do, Flavia believes this moment to be the most exciting thing to ever have happened in her life. Curiosity getting the better of her, she sets out to determine who this stranger is and how he ended up dead on de Luce property.
Despite the protagonist being an 11 year old girl, this is not a children’s book. Not that there’s anything terribly ‘adult’ in the book (well, murder, for one …), but I’m just pointing that out. Anyway, I adore Flavia. I think she is really the ‘thing’ that makes this book (and the second one as well) work so well. She is quirky, clever and oh so slightly snobby since she knows she’s smarter than most people (especially her sisters), but in the charmingly arrogant way of children who think they know everything, not in a “Omg-she’s-so-cocky” way, if that makes any sense. She tends to run off on tangents when talking about matters, but it is almost always funny how she does so, then mentions how it was totally relevant to whatever she was talking about before.
For me, Flavia is the reason I kept reading this book. Not to say that the mystery isn’t good or anything because it is, it just wouldn’t be anywhere as good (though I liked the plot of this mystery more than the one in the second book). Ignoring the characters for a second, the basic plot is good, but there’s really nothing that amazing about it without Flavia. It’s my belief that Flavia’s eccentricty is what gives this novel its uniqueness.
A storytelling issue I had was when the characters would sit down with Flavia and explain huge backstories or divulge parts of the mystery to her that I feel she should be out solving, but instead she gets handed to on a silver platter. For example, she finds out the whole history between her father and the victim of the murder when her father explains it to her (which took a whole chapter to do). Being given an explanation to a part of the mystery isn’t as exciting as discovering it, I must say. I don’t remember this happening in book two, at least not to the extent it happened in this book. But none of that bothers me as much as this: in the book there is a little rhyme: “Unless some sweetness at the bottom lie / Who cares for all the crinkling of the pie?” that Flavia does not understand. It pops up a few times in the book and each time Flavia still doesn’t understand it, but at the end of the novel, it is never mentioned again and Flavia never figures it out, which kind of drove me crazy (I don’t understand it really either).
Regardless, I did enjoy this book very much and it is one I would recommend. Flavia, Flavia, Flavia. She is just such an amazing character and I would definitely continue reading more books in this series.
My Rating: 4/5
