The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by alan Bradley

[lightreads]

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


You’d really think a book about an eleven-year-old smart-mouth named flavia de Luce who lives on an old English estate in 1950, loves chemistry and poisons, and solves crime would be inherently awesome. Unfortunately, no book is inherently awesome. Why do I have to keep learning this over and over again?



This one is just . . . lacking . . . something. I mean, Flavia’s great – she’s the sort of crazy who, at eleven, plans to write a magnum opus on poisons and note, under cyanide, that it is “particularly efficacious in the cure of those who call one ‘dearie.;” But Flavia’s extraordinariness is mishandled, somehow. This book needed to be either exponentially more zany, or exponentially less – either would have helped.



And if I’m ever teaching a writing class (God forbid -- my girlfriend has said on multiple occasions that I should never be given access to young minds, even though I can still be said to have one myself) I now have an example of a well-written book with a completely unconvincing voice. These are distinct qualities. The writing here is excellent – crisp and dry and intricate. And Flavia has great eleven-year-old moments, like shouting all the way down hills on her bicycle (named Gladys), and singing unself-consciously. But she also says things like this on every page, “The finely curved legs of the Queen Ann nightstand seemed almost indecent beside the gloomy gothic bed in the corner, as if some sour old chamberlain were looking on dyspeptically as his mistress unfurled silk stockings over her long, youthful legs.” What a great simile! But. The blasé sexual imagery, use of the word ‘youthful’ as if this is a concept she has adult perspective on, it’s all wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. There’s precocious, and then there’s simply bad voice.





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Comments

[readerjane]

I think of you as an intrepid explorer, complete with pith helmet and Doodledog lolloping at your side, ranging out into the bush to bring back curiosities for the rest of us.

"Oh, yes, that beast had a splendid musculature, but its voice was too squeaky to intimidate. Don't waste your time on that one."

Love the travelogues. *G*

[lightreads]

Lol.

[ecaterin]

YK, I just adore your book reviews. I can get reviews anywhere that talk about the emotional impact or the character/world building or the writing quality - but you review books based on what a writer learns about how to craft a book. And that is sooo much more specific, not to mention meaningful, to me :)

Doesn't hurt that you're also FUNNEH - I read a lot of your reviews out loud to my giggling family :D

*has a sudden wonder what your software does with emoticons - have you taught it to give you laughs for :D ? or sniffles for :( ? The internets are weird - interpreting them visually is strange enough :)*

[lightreads]

based on what a writer learns about how to craft a book

Okay, that is exactly what I set out to do. Reviewing everything was a new years resolution five years ago, and my explicit purpose was to read like a writer. Which involved untraining some of those lit degree undergrad habits, but I'm really okay with that. I have a pet theory that, if I've improved as a writer in any measurable way through the three years of law school when I wasn't writing much, it was because of reviewing.

Emoticons, heh. I used to have all the common ones redefined, so :D was "smiley," etc. I have a relatively clean install right now, though, and I lost all my settings, so I'm just getting "dee" for things like :D and D: since I have a lot of punctuation turned off. Should fix that.

Oh, off topic. this may be relevant to your interests</a