- 11 - Flavia de Luce

-Flavia de Luce #1

Author:

Alan Bradley

Published:

2009

Genre:

young adult, crime

400 pages [German Edition]

374 pages [English Edition]

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‘I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t.’

-Flavia de Luce

Content

In summer 1950, the eleven-year-old girl Flavia de Luce finds a corpse in the cucumber bed of the grand, old mansion ‘Buckshaw’ she and her family live in.

The police consider the girl’s father as a suspect because he was arguing with the dead man the day before. Flavia is the only one who believes in her father’s innocence and that’s why she needs to find the real murderer on her own.

The girl’s knowledge of chemistry, her intelligence and her love for brewing poisons helps her tracing the different leads.

But finding out more and more, the trust in her father’s innocence is severely tested.

Will the girl be able to solve the case and get her father out of prison?

My Review

A thing I absolutely loved about this book is the language.

It is pretty and on a high level, not not what would expect of book for children.

It seems like Flavia’s intelligence is expressed by and ‘intelligent’ language too.

I could always imagine all the described places, the old ‘Buckshaw’ for example, and the people Flavia stumbles across on her investigation, clearly.

As I already mentioned, Flavia is very keen on chemistry. Because of that the whole book is covered with chemistry facts and experiments the little girl conducts on her own.

There was one fact that was explained I personally found extremely interesting and cool...

You sometimes can see see-through ‘things’ in your range of vision, when you don’t concentrate on watching something special and just let your eyes wander around. These ‘things’ drop down your focus if you don’t watch them and if you try to they jump away.

As a child I always wondered what these spots were and why they appeared.

I never heard anybody else talking about these spots so I assumed that I was the only one who is able to see them…

I considered me having super powers or being a wizard was the only plausible reason for it and I always kind if waited for my Hogwarts letter to arrive… until I read that book because there is a biological explanation for that. xD

*I hope that you know what I am talking about because if not this must sound pretty weird. If there is at least one of you who knows what I am talking about and maybe also wondered what this phenomenon was the whole time, I would find that pretty, pretty cool and I would like to hear about it. :D*

Ups, I wandered off the point a bit… back to the book. xD

Flavia is the first-person narrator of this book.

I am not sure how to feel about her…

I really like that even though she ‘only’ is a small girl, she is so smart, creative and braver than I could ever be in my entire live.

She is cleverer than every single adult in that book and the way she thinks, sees the world and describes everything is very cute.

In addition to that I really like the way Flavia argues and talks with her two sisters. Of course it is a bit exaggerated, but still very funny.

I am sure that many brothers and sisters *me and my sister included* partly act just like the three girls in this book do.

On the other hand Flavia annoyed me from time to time…

She is a girl who isn’t girlish at all, who is annoyed of her sister who only cares about her exterior and her other sister who reads the whole day. This wouldn’t be a problem if it wouldn’t be mentioned so much.

This stereotype of an ‘ungirlish’ girl is shown on nearly every single page and because Flavia narrates the story it even influences the way we as the readers experience everything.

That’s why I can’t really say whether I like Flavia or not… :o

Closing, I need to admit that the plot of ‘The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie’ evolves a bit slowly.

Flavia thinks very much on her own, which is enjoyable but also keeps the plot from going on quickly.

Recommendation

Even though this officially is a youth / young adult / whatever book I don’t recommend this book to young readers.

The way it is written is too boring and also a bit too difficult for ‘children’ I think.

My sister (14 years) for example started reading this book, but abandoned if after a few pages… She doesn’t like reading very much, so if you maybe are 14 too, but you read much, you might enjoy it though.

If you think about reading this book you shouldn’t mind a plot which is a bit childish and you should like detective stories.

If you have a weakness for chemistry you HAVE to read it. I really mean it. You HAVE to!

I don’t hate chemistry, but I don’t love it either.

I partly understood what Flavia was talking about but definitely not everything.

If you read the book and you absolutely love it, don’t panic, there currently are eight other books about Flavia de Luce and a new one is about to come out this year. ^^

I have bought the second book too, so I probably will write a review about it in the future.

Hugs,

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