Mad Soul Child
Written on Aug 11, 2020
WINNER OF THE AGATHA • ARTHUR ELLIS • DILYS • DEBUT DAGGER AWARDS
“Wonderfully entertaining . . . sure to be one of the most loved mysteries of the year . . . [Flavia is] a delightful, intrepid, acid-tongued new heroine.”—Chicago Sun-Times
It is the summer of 1950–and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath.
For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”
BONUS: This edition contains a The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie discussion guide and an excerpt from Alan Bradley's The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag.
- ISBN10 0385343493
- ISBN13 9780385343497
- Publish Date 19 January 2010 (first published 1 January 2009)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc
- Imprint Bantam Doubleday Dell
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 416
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780385343497
Reviews
mrs_mander_reads
Written on Mar 27, 2019
funstm
Written on Apr 2, 2017
Liz (Bent Bookworm)
Written on Jul 24, 2016
As someone who was - not meaning to toot my own horn here - a very precocious child myself, with interests far outside of most of my peers, and very, very lonely until I gave up on the idea of having real friends and devoted myself to books until people grew up enough (yes, I distinctly remember having thoughts, at about Flavia's age, that no one except a rare adult or two understood me at all but maybe when my "friends" grew up they might) - I found her to be not only believable but immensely charming. There, was that sentence long enough? I wish I had known someone like Flavia as a child. I'm sure my parents are grateful I didn't. I didn't ever have the brazenness she exhibits, probably because my parents were not eccentric explorers or gentry like hers. Also she was growing up in the 50s, when it was generally much safer than the 90s to allow your children to run all over town and not worry about them until dinner. I would also have been much better off if I had been able to come to her conclusion about the rest of the world at an earlier age, but, c'est la vie.
I was me. I was Flavia. And I loved myself, even if no one else did.
Flavia is an astute observer and is without many of the filters that an adult narrator would have. While the mystery itself is nothing very deep, it's the setting and the characters that populate the story that made me love it so much (and immediately set about procuring the next one!). Flavia's inner commentary is by turns shrewd and naive - something else Bradley managed to strike just the right balance on to maintain the believability of her 11 years.
It's a fact of life that a girl can tell in a flash if another girl likes her...With a boy you can never know whether he's smitten or gagging, but with a girl you can tell in the first three seconds.
Then there are all the delightful references to literature and culture thrown in, which just added to the charm. I love meeting people who've read the same books I have!
"I was hardly surprised to read that he (Flavia's father) had named his first two offspring after a Shakespearean hysteric and a Greek pincushion."
In short, I just want to go visit and meet all these people, because I feel like despite their eccentricities I would like them very much. I really hope that Bradley lets us get to know them and their histories better. Especially Dogger. Dogger is just so sweet and yet so broken...I want to know more about what made him that way. Also I definitely want to see Flavia grow up! She reminds me, slightly, of Anne of Green Gables, only with a scientific bent instead of literary.
5/5 stars. It maybe should have been 4/5, due to what was, in hindsight, a rather shallow mystery aspect...but I enjoyed the reading of it so much I can't help myself. 5 stars it is!
lovelybookshelf
Written on Jul 23, 2013
Oh, Flavia. What a character! I love her wit, her intelligence, her slightly misanthropic ways, and how she's just a bit of a holy terror. I was completely absorbed in this mystery, just like when I was a kid devouring every Nancy Drew, Bobbsey Twins, or Trixie Belden story I could find. I turned page after page not only to find out what happened next, but to see what Flavia would say next. She kept me laughing with statements such as: "If poisons were ponies, I'd put my money on cyanide," and "There were far too many books to search, so I tried to think of which of them would be least likely to be looked into. Of course! The Bible!"
I enjoy fiction that inspires me to search the web to learn more, and this book didn't disappoint. There is a healthy dose of history in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and that combined with the humor and the plot made for a very entertaining read. I wish I hadn't waited so long to give this a try, and I'm looking forward to reading the other books in the series.
Whitney @ First Impressions Reviews
Written on Nov 15, 2010
Flavia de Luce is an 11 year old chemistry enthusiast and with her candied insight and dry sense of humor comes off like an 40 year old stuck in an 11 year old's body. Her mother Harriett died in a mountaineering accident when she was one and is left with her two older sisters Ophelia, who is obsessed with her looks and Daphne, who is obsessed with books, both insisting that she was adopted. Her father has an obsession with stamp collecting and tends to keep to himself, leaving the eccentric housekeeper Mrs. Mullet and the jack of all trades, Dogger in charge of the children.
Everyday life changes at Buckshaw Manor when they find a jack snipe dead on their doorstep with a stamp penetrated through its beak. Twenty-four hours later, Flavia watches a man take his last breath of air in the cucumber patch. Even though the police are on the case the young Madam Currie in the making feels they are doing an insufficient job and with her knowledge of poisons hops on her bicycle Gladys determined to solve the crime herself.
Due to her mad scientist persona she accomplishes much more than giving her sister poison ivy via lip-stick, but deduces methods of death through her keen sense of smell and impeccable hearing. I could just picture her saying "Elementary, my dear Watson". Flavia is a breath of fresh air with the likes of her character not having been seen since Carolyn Keene's Nancy Drew, making for a sharp original series.
Eve1972
Written on Jul 26, 2009