Synopses & Reviews
In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavias family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. 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 wasnt. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”To Flavia the investigation is the stuff of science: full of possibilities, contradictions, and connections. Soon her father, a man raising his three daughters alone, is seized, accused of murder. And in a police cell, during a violent thunderstorm, Colonel de Luce tells his daughter an astounding storyof a schoolboy friendship turned ugly, of a priceless object that vanished in a bizarre and brazen act of thievery, of a Latin teacher who flung himself to his death from the schools tower thirty years before. Now Flavia is armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together, to examine new suspects, and begin a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself. Of this much the girl is sure: her father is innocent of murderbut protecting her and her sisters from something even worse….
An enthralling mystery, a piercing depiction of class and society, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a masterfully told tale of deceptionsand a rich literary delight.
Review
"While Flavia De Luce is winning your heart, she may also be poisoning your tea. She's the most wickedly funny sleuth in years, brilliant, unpredictable, unflappable — and only eleven. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie offers the freshest new voice in mystery yet." Charles Todd, author of The Ian Rutledge series
Review
"A wickedly clever story, a dead true and original voice, and an English country house in the summer: Alexander McCall Smith meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Please, please, Mr. Bradley, tell me we'll be seeing Flavia again soon?" Laurie R. King, author of the Mary Russell
Review
"Alan Bradley's marvelous book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, is a fantastic read, a winner. Flavia walks right off the page and follows me through my day. I can hardly wait for the next book. Bravo!" Louise Penny, author of Still Life
Review
"The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie offers the reader the precious gift of a richly imagined and luscious new world — but uniquely so, for this is the world of Flavia Sabina de Luce: an eleven-year-old, utterly winning, and altogether delightfully nasty piece of work. An outright pleasure from beginning to end." Gordon Dahlquist, author of The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters
Review
"Alan Bradley brews a bubbly beaker of fun in his devilishly clever, wickedly amusing debut mystery, launching an eleven-year-old heroine with a passion for chemistry — and revenge! What a delightful, original book!" Carolyn Hart, author of the Death on Demand series
Review
"Alan Bradley brews a bubbly beaker of fun in his devilishly clever, wickedly amusing debut mystery, launching an eleven-year-old heroine with a passion for chemistry — and revenge! What a delightful, original book!" Carolyn Hart, author of the Death on Demand series
Review
"Bradley won a Dagger award and multi-book deal when one of the judges was captivated by Flavia's character. Her charm continues to mesmerize, the book is now sold in 19 countries and, since its release in the U.S. this spring, has launched onto indie best-seller lists. Locally, it's a staff favorite at Broadway Books and Powell's, and has close to 200 folks signed up waiting for a copy from the Multnomah County Library." Peggy McMullen, The Oregonian (read the entire
About the Author
Alan Bradley has published many childrens stories as well as lifestyle and arts columns in Canadian newspapers. His adult stories have been broadcast on CBC Radio and published in various literary journals. He won the first Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award for Childrens Literature. He lives in British Columbia. Delacorte Press will publish the next in Bradleys delirious new series, The Weed That Strings the Hangmans Bag, in 2010.
Reading Group Guide
Reader's Guide
1. With her high level of knowledge, her erudition and her self-reliance, Flavia hardly seems your typical eleven-year-old girl. Or does she? Discuss Flavia and her personality, and how her character drives this novel. Can you think of other books that have used a similar protagonist?
2. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie falls within the tradition of English country house mysteries, but with the devilishly intelligent Flavia racing around Bishop's Lacey on her bike instead of the expected older woman ferreting out the truth by chatting with her fellow villagers. Discuss how Bradley uses the traditions of the genre, and how he plays with them too.
3. What is your favorite scene from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie?
4. With her excessive interest in poisons and revenge, it's no surprise that Flavia is fascinated, not scared, as she watches the stranger die in her garden. In your view, is her dark matter-of-factness more refreshing or disturbing?
5. Flavia reminds us often about Harriet, the mother she never knew, and has many keepsakes that help her imagine what she was like. Do you think the real Harriet would have fit into Flavia's mold?
6. Flavia's distance from her father, the Colonel, is obvious, yet she loves him all the same. Does their relationship change over the course of the novel in a lasting way? Would Flavia want it to?
7. Through Flavia's eyes, what sort of a picture does Alan Bradley paint of the British aristocracy? Think as well about how appearances aren't always reality, as with the borderline bankruptcy of Flavia's father and Dr. Kissing.
8. Discuss the meaning (or meanings) of the title The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.
9. What twists in the plot surprised you the most?
10. Buckshaw, the estate, is almost a character in its own right here, with its overlarge wings, hidden laboratory, and pinched front gates. Talk about how Bradley brings the setting to life in this novel not only Buckshaw itself, but Bishop's Lacey and the surrounding area.
11. What does Flavia care about most in life? How do the people around her compare to her chemistry lab and books?
12. Like any scientist, Flavia expects her world to obey certain rules, and seems to be thrown off kilter when surprises occur. How much does she rely on the predictability of those around her, like her father and her sisters, in order to pursue her own interests (like solving the murder)?
Copyright Random House 2009
Author Q&A
Q: With the publication of
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, you've become a 70-year-old-first time novelist. Have you always had a passion for writing or is it more of a recent development?
A: Well, the Roman author Seneca once said something like this: "Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms you'll be able to use them better when you're older." So to put it briefly, I'm taking his advice.
I actually spent most of my life working on the technical side of television production, but would like to think that I've always been a writer. I started writing a novel at age five, and have written articles for various publications all my life. It wasn't until my early retirement, though, that I started writing books. I published my memoir, The Shoebox Bible, in 2004, and then started working on a mystery about a reporter in England. It was during the writing of this story that I stumbled across Flavia de Luce, the main character in Sweetness.
Q: Flavia certainly is an interesting character. How did you come up with such a
forceful, precocious and entertaining personality?
A: Flavia walked onto the page of another book I was writing, and simply hijacked the story. I was actually well into this other book about three or four chapters and as I introduced a main character, a detective, there was a point where he was required to go to a country house and interview this colonel.
I got him up to the driveway and there was this girl sitting on a camp stool doing something with a notebook and a pencil and he stopped and asked her what she was doing and she said "writing down license number plates" and he said "well there can't be many in such a place" and she said, "well I have yours, don't I?" I came to a stop. I had no idea who this girl was and where she came from.
She just materialized. I can't take any credit for Flavia at all. I've never had a character who came that much to life. I've had characters that tend to tell you what to do, but Flavia grabbed the controls on page one. She sprung full-blown with all of her attributes her passion for poison, her father and his history all in one package. It surprised me.
Q: There aren't many adult books that feature child narrators. Why did you want Flavia to be the voice of this novel?
A: People probably wonder, "What"s a 70-year-old-man doing writing about an 11-year-old-girl in 1950s England?" And it's a fair question. To me, Flavia embodies that kind of hotly burning flame of our young years: that time of our lives when we’re just starting out, when anything absolutely anything! is within our capabilities.
I think the reason that she manifested herself as a young girl is that I realized that it would really be a lot of fun to have somebody who was virtually invisible in a village. And of course, we don't listen to what children say they're always asking questions, and nobody pays the slightest attention or thinks for a minute that they're going to do anything with the information that they let slip. I wanted Flavia to take great advantage of that. I was also intrigued by the possibilities of dealing with an unreliable narrator; one whose motives were not always on the up-and-up.
She is an amalgam of burning enthusiasm, curiosity, energy, youthful idealism, and frightening fearlessness. She's also a very real menace to anyone who thwarts her, but fortunately, they don't generally realize it.
Q: Like Flavia, you were also 11 years old in 1950. Is there anything autobiographical about her character?
A: Somebody pointed out the fact that both Flavia and I lacked a parent. But I wasn't aware of this connection during the writing of the book. It simply didn't cross my mind. It is true that I grew up in a home with only one parent, and I was allowed to run pretty well free, to do the kinds of things I wanted. And I did have extremely intense interests then things that you get focused on. When you're that age, you sometimes have a great enthusiasm that is very deep and very narrow, and that is something that has always intrigued me that world of the 11-year-old that is so quickly lost.
Q: Your story evokes such a vivid setting. Had you spent much time in the British countryside before writing this book?
A: My first trip to England didn't come until I went to London to receive the 2007 Debut Dagger Award, so I had never even stepped foot in the country at the time of writing Sweetness. But I have always loved England. My mother was born there. And I've always felt I grew up in a very English household. I had always wanted to go and had dreamed for many years of doing so.
When I finally made it there, the England that I was seeing with my eyes was quite unlike the England I had imagined, and yet it was the same. I realized that the differences were precisely those differences between real life, and the simulation of real life, that we create in our detective novels. So this was an opportunity to create on the page this England that had been in my head my whole life.
Q: You have five more books lined up in this series, all coming from Delacorte Press. Will Flavia age as the series goes on?
A: A bit, not very much. I think she's going to remain in the same age bracket. I don't really like the idea of Flavia as an older teenager. At her current age, she is such a concoction of contradictions. It's one of the things that I very much love about her. She's eleven but she has the wisdom of an adult. She knows everything about chemistry but nothing about family relationships.
I don't think she'd be the same person if she were a few years older. She certainly wouldn't have access to the drawing rooms of the village.
Q: Do you have a sense of what the next books in the series will be about?
A: The second book, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, is finished, and I'm working on the third book. I have a general idea of what's happening in each one of the books, because I wanted to focus on some bygone aspect of British life that was still there in the '50s but has now vanished. So we have postage stamps in the first one... The second book is about the travelling puppet shows on the village green. And one of them is about filmmaking it sort of harks back to the days of the classic Ealing comedies with Alec Guinness and so forth.
Q: Not every author garners such immediate success with a first novel. After only completing 15 pages of Sweetness, you won the Dagger award and within eight days had secured book deals in three countries. You've since secured 19 countries. Enthusiasm continues to grow from every angle. How does it feel?
A: It's like being in the glow of a fire. You hope you won't get burned. I'm not sure how much I've realized it yet. I guess I can say I'm "almost overwhelmed" I'm not quite overwhelmed, but I'm getting there. Every day has something new happening, and communications pouring in from people all over. The book has been receiving wonderful reviews and touching people. But Flavia has been touching something in people that generates a response from the heart, and the most often mentioned word in the reviews is love how much people love Flavia and have taken her in as if she's a long-lost member of their family, which is certainly very, very gratifying.
Copyright Random House 2009