Author Alan Bradley’s story is extraordinary. He was offered a multi-book deal, based solely on a single chapter of today’s review: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. So my new plan is to just write single chapters of all of the books running around in my head. But I digress. Let’s find out if that was a good deal for the publishers–and for us.
Bradley’s certainly created something original in young Flavia de Luce. She’s a brilliant 11-year-old with an obsession for chemistry, who’s forced into solving a mystery when a man ends up dead at her house, and her father is arrested for the murder.
The mystery here is interesting, and everything just feels right for the period–it seems Mr. Bradley has really done his homework.
The problem is that I just don’t believe Flavia. I want to. I really do. I get the brilliant kid. I get the interest in chemistry. But she just doesn’t ring true. She’s too smart. Too experienced. Too willing to ignore rules that she feels are silly. Everyone here (other than her sisters and the baddies) seem to love her, but I don’t think she’d be very pleasant to hang around with. And when does she have time to do learn about all of this? She’s well-versed in science, Shakespeare, and ornithology, but also seems to have time to keep up with pop culture of the time–including cartoons, songs, and musicals. I just don’t believe there are enough hours in an 11-year-old’s day to learn all of this.
And her voice seems wrong. She uses turns of phrase, similes, and vocabulary that NO 11-year-old–not even a brilliant one–would use. It doesn’t matter how smart she is, she hasn’t had the life experience to be able to use these in such an offhand way.
People keep describing Flavia as precocious, but I think that’s just a word they’re using to hand-wave away the fact that she’s just not a believable character.
So why three stars? Because I still enjoyed the book, and the mystery. And if Flavia were an adult–or even just a few years older–almost all of my problems with this book go away. But I get it: She wouldn’t be the character she is if she was older. So I guess I can’t win.
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