I have a soft spot for precocious children, both in real life and in books. With their unconventional interests and peculiar perspectives, they often delight and amaze me.
Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce is no exception, the protagonist of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley. A self-proclaimed chemist, with a particular interest in poisons, Flavia’s insatiable curiosity inevitably gets her into some serious scrapes. Her intelligence, quickwittedness and daring usually get her out again.
This cozy murder-mystery iis set in an iconic British village in 1950, after World War II. The historical setting provides a backdrop for Flavia’s adventures, and back-story for the characters, but in this historical fiction, it is the characters who really stand out. Flavia lives with her widowed father and two older sisters. Her father is still lost in mourning for his wife,who died in a mountain climbing accident when Flavia was only a year old. To say Flavia does not get on with her older sisters is putting it mildly. The rivalry is constant and entertaining. Daphne (Daffy) is obsessed with books, and Ophelia (Feely) is obsessed with looks (and boys), both passions that Flavia finds boring and insipid. When they tie her up and lock her in the closet, she plans a revenge using poison to cause a rash.
There is also a housekeeper/cook who comes in the daytime. She is a pleasant lady given to some cockamamie and superstitious notions, but she has her own duties and little time for or understanding of Flavia. The only other member of the household is Dogger, the valet/gardener, who understands and even sympathizes with Flavia, but suffers from debilitating shell-shock. Thus Flavia has a great deal of freedom to do as she pleases.
In a cast full of well-developed, thoroughly envisioned, characters, Flavia stands out as a remarkable individual. While the other members of her family pursue their own eccentric passions, Flavia discovers the chemistry lab of one of her ancestors. Ensconced in this remarkably complete laboratory, she delights in conducting bizarre experiments (most of which work) with some rather surprising and illuminating results. But Flavia is not limited to her lab. With her trusty bicycle, Gladys, Flavia manages to show up all over the county, asking questions and interpreting the answers. An accomplished liar herself, Flavia can usually tell when the answers she gets are more fabrication than truth.
In the end, Flavia really just wants to be recognized for her skill; or even just acknowledged as a valuable person; as someone to be taken seriously; as someone who matters. However, she knows full well that no one pays close attention to the knowledge of children and that asking too many questions of the wrong people will get her freedom curtailed. So in spite of the limitations an eleven-year-old child faces in investigating a crime, Flavia blithely carries on. Using her knowledge of chemistry, the results of her experiments, her persistence in chasing after clues and scraps of knowledge, she manages to stump the grown-ups and come to the right answers, though surviving to tell the tale is more challenging.
This introduction to young Flavia is bound to leave the reader wanting more. Not to worry: there are 10 more books in the series, giving everyone ample opportunity to get to know her even better.
Books in order:
| 1.The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie | (2009) | |
| 2, The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag | (2010) | |
| 3. A Red Herring Without Mustard | (2011) | |
| 4. I Am Half-Sick of Shadows | (2011) | |
| 5. Speaking from Among the Bones | (2012) | |
| 6. The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches | (2014) | |
| 6.5 The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse | (2014) | |
| 7. As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust | (2015) | |
| 8. Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d | (2016) | |
| 9. The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place | (2017) | |
| 10. The Golden Tresses of the Dead | (2019) |
BRIC-A-BRAC 