Sarah's Best Sellers blog: Book 3 review: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Book 3 Review

The book The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley is set in the Buckshaw mansion in the 1950s in England. A little eleven-year old, chemisty-obessesed girl named Flavia de Luce is the narrator. A dead bird is found on her doorstep with a postage stamp pinned to its beak. That same night, she finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he says his last word, “Vale”. The reader follows her on her quest to find the murderer.

This book is enjoyable because of the unique characters that it contains. Flavia is the most intriguing to me. In a recent interview with Alan Bradley, he said, “Flavia understands chemistry better than she understands life in her own household. That idealism has great interest for me. Flavia is completely blind to family relationships. Her experience of life is zero. She sees things but doesn’t understand them.” Flavia relies on chemistry whenever she is frustrated. Even when she got a cold, she concocted her own medicine with eucalyptus leaves and chicken broth, calling it “chicken fizz”. Flavia is always seeking out adventure. She loves the fact that a murder needs to be solved, and she doesn’t care what measures have to be taken. Flavia also tends to make fun of her two sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, quite a lot. She thinks Ophelia is obsessed with herself too much, because she is always looking in the mirror. Flavia then decides to put poison ivy in her lipstick to make her break out. The reader can obviously relate to Flavia because of her curious hobbies and revenge on siblings.

The book is a story that evokes emotion from the reader. It lets them relate themselves to a quirky eleven-year-old girl, and use their imagination to solve the mystery. It also lets the reader struggle a bit with moral issues intertwined within the plot. If Dogger, the gardener, murdered Horace Bonepenny it would perfectly acceptable because he occasionally has episodes where he can’t remember anything. The reader also trusts Dogger because he is extremely trustworthy and loyal to the de Luce family. Then we have the issue of Flavia’s father being the potential suspect. Readers are torn at this point because they know that he had good reasons to get back at Horace, with him potentially killing his favorite schoolmaster and getting away with it because most people believed it was suicide. The novel really does a great job at getting inside of the minds of readers.

The writing style is pretty simple and sometimes seems plain if someone was just flipping through the book, but when reading, it feels organized and smooth, with flowing vocabulary. He uses lots of similes, “Whenever I heat this music it makes me think of running so fast that my legs can barely keep up with themselves as I swoop from side to side, mewing into the wind, like a rapturous seagull. Most of his style comes out through Flavia’s humorous jokes and view on the world around her. “And don’t puff out your cheeks like that: It makes you look like a petulant pear”. Flavia’s humor is what keeps the reader interested throughout the novel because she provides the most interesting commentary. Even when she was kidnapped, gagged and tied up, she said she thought the situation was amusing. Bradley shows that children are usually the bravest and most positive people on the planet.

I would give this book an overall 4.5 stars because of the entertaining perspective, interesting characters, hidden themes, and smooth writing style. This book was as spunky, strange, and unpredictable.

Book Cover: