Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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69 of 73 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fun with Flavia, Young Sleuth Extraordinare..., March 27, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
"The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie" is a simple mystery, written without explicit violence, sexual situations, or terrorists. The book is filled with humor that is delightful, very tongue-in-cheek and very British. The mystery is solved; its solution is arrived at through intelligent thinking and resourcefulness. The characters are interesting and develop distinct personalities through the course of the story.
Flavia de Luce, heroine of "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie" is an intrepid young lady with a penchant for poisons. Arsenic and its antidotes are her special interests. A brilliant, budding chemist, she is also an all-around persistent protagonist who insists on inserting herself into every situation!
Flavia's family consists of her reclusive, eccentric father and two older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne. Her mother, Harriet, was an adventurer who died tragically during a mountain climbing expedition. Of the three sisters, Flavia believes herself to be most like her mother. The core family is completed by Mrs. Mullet, the cook/housekeeper, and Dogger, a former soldier who served with Mr. deLuce. Having served in a number of positions during his employment with the de Luces, Dogger is now the gardner. He is also Flavia's confidante and mentors her in useful skills such as lockpicking.
Intelligent preteens will find in Flavia someone with whom they can identify. Individuals seeking an entertaining read which does not require intense concentration will sail through this novel. As this is the first in a series, I will be interested to see how the characters develop and whether Bradley can resist succumbing to the formula mystery genre to which so many authors fall prey. I hope he will resist that temptation and continue to provide interesting characters and situations so that Flavia can continue her sleuthing.
Alan Bradley has crafted a wonderful book which should appeal to a broad audience. It is well written; Bradley uses an extensive vocabulary as is fitting for someone of Flavia's intelligence. I rated this book as a four star read because of its simplicity and because the reader is not pulled so deeply into the story as to lose track of time.
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48 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
NAME YOUR POISON, April 4, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie features a precocious 11 year old named Flavia DeLuce who possesses a love of chemistry, a passionate obsession with poisons, a bicycle named Gladys, and a talent for deductive reasoning. (Could our Flavia somehow be the adolescent female version of Sherlock Holmes?) For all her intelligence Falvia also demonstrates her childish "get even" mentality as illustrated by the revenge she wreaks on he older sisters.
I will admit that it took a couple of chapters for me to warm up to the unusual group of folks living at the decrepit country mansion called Buckshaw. The family dynamic is unusual to say the least, and the vocabulary and knowledge pouring forth from Flavia as she narrates the story takes a little getting used to. Perhaps I was a bit jealous and somewhat intimidated by all the scientific knowledge this little "smart-aleck" had to impart, or could it have been that I found myself imagining what it would be like to live in a household inhabited by Flavia and the dysfunctional cast of characters that surrounded her. If I still smoked, that thought alone would have found me reaching for a "gasper".
Author, Alan Bradley has managed to give his readers an unconventional protagonist, a creative, somewhat amusing and intriguing story, as well as multiple mysteries to solve. Written for the adult reader, Flavia is definitely more Nero Wolfe than Nancy Drew. Just abandon logic and reality, hop aboard Gladys and take a bumpy ride back to 1950's England with Flavia DeLuce, girl sleuth. 31/2 stars
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25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
well done, April 5, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Alan Bradley has crafted a great read in "Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie." Flavia, the main character, is a fascinating young chemist/detective.
Before I began reading, centering a story on around a child detective struck me as an odd choice. However, once I started the book, I found that Flavia's youth and wit were an excellent combination for a literary sleuth. Because of her youth, apparent clues that she has (temporarily) failed to notice can be forgiven by the reader. Because of her sharp mind, it is believable when she pieces a solution together using bits of information that may have been overlooked by others. While she occasionally drifts toward a dark personality, I found Flavia to be an extraordinarily interesting and likable character.
The mystery unfolds at a good pace. I was well into the book before I began to catch on to the solution, and even after I had figured out the probable culprit, I was still glued to the pages while Flavia went to work sorting out the details.
If one were to nitpick, there were two small passages that were mildly irksome. One involved a sibling squabble that ended with an accusation of being adopted. It was an unnecessary part of the story, and using the concept of adoption as a threat or a curse, even in an argument between children, is tiresome. The second is a brief discussion involving a mock Chinese accent, recounted with stereotypical "r - l" substitutions.
However, both of these issues were minor, and easily forgiven based on the quality of writing and wonderfully developed characters. I enjoyed the book tremendously and hope to read more adventures of Miss Flavia de Luce in the future.
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