The Sweetness of a Very Good Read

This week, I finished The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. This was yet another free Random House ebook. (Yay, Uncle Random House!) But unlike a few other books I have tried to read lately, this one was a home run.

From the flap copy, I was charmed on several levels:

1) It's set in England in the wake of WWII

2) The main character is 11

3) She is a brilliant little chemist

4) She has a giant vocabulary

5) She has a flare for the dramatic. Who doesn't love that in their narrator?

This was one of the very small number of books our there that hooked me from the first sentence: "It was  as black in the closet as old blood." As the chapter progresses, you learn that it is her sisters that are behind this inhumane torture of hog-tying.

I really enjoyed the writing in this book. The characters were relatable. The setting was warm. But the truth is, Flavia de Luce is what makes this book worth reading. She ended up being one of my favorite narrators in a long time time. She was precocious, snarky, transparent, real, and a brilliant little chemist.

What I have heard/read from Flavia's critics is that they couldn't connect with her. That she was cold, selfish, mean, and larger than life. Somehow, they think this makes her unreliable. But I have to disagree. What I really liked were the moments that you remembered that she was a kid. For most of the book, you don't think of her as a 11 year old girl. She's just your narrator. What keeps her from tipping into "unreliable narrator" territory are the moments that her youth shines through. Times that she fights with her sisters, or has the desire to throw herself into her daddy's arms, or for about 40 pages at the end, she really is simply a brilliant 11 year old girl who hasn't fully figured out who she is. (Forgive the cryptic nature of parts of that sentence, but I don't want to give away too much.)

I really liked her relationship with her sisters. It was strained at the best of times, as with most sibling relationships thought adolescence, but even more than Flavia knows, her sisters are a part of her. Not in an overt way, but they flit in and out of her narration in the most charming fashion. Feely (Ophelia) the oldest and the boy crazy one is the brunt of Flavia's calculated wrath through a good chunk of the book. What struck me about this sister was: isn't it so easy for a brilliant mind that has not yet gone through puberty to pigeonhole emotion as "crazy"? Feely's passion for life makes Flavia incredibly uncomfortable.

And then there's Daffy. Quiet and bookish Daphne. She is a direct foil to the chemist in Flavia. Where Flavia is more comfortable in her lab cooking up the perfect poison, Daffy would rather have her nose in a book; in a reality that doesn't truly exist. Through her frustration with her sister's bookishness, Flavia's own hermit-like tendencies are thrown into full relief.

I think what I liked so much is that Flavia is trying to find who she is in relation to them, in spite of herself.

Gorgeous.

So, all of that to say: READ THIS BOOK. It is wonderful.