The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: Miss Marple Meets Harriet the Spy

"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."



My book club recently read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and it has stuck in my mind for a couple reasons.

First, there is the precocious young sleuth, Flavia, who reminds me of another of my favorite girl-detectives, Enola Holmes. Like Enola, Flavia is educated beyond her years and struggles with the loss of a mother and the isolation of her upper-class upbringing. Both are strong heroines, living in times where the role of women is in flux, Enola in Victorian Britain and Flavia in the post-war years.

Second, this book raised the question among my fellow book-clubbers as to whether it should be classified as Young Adult. The vintage feel of the book's thick, apple-green cover and large typeface recalls the books we read as kids and the story is written from the perspective of a young heroine. However, the language and tone are well beyond your average 11 year old and the arc of the mystery seems to have the adult reader in mind.

So, what makes a story YA literature? My search for an answer took me to a post by Cheryl Klein in her Brooklyn Arden blog. Her definition has five key points (although I highly recommend reading Klein's further discussion, as that's where the meat of her analysis lies):

"A YA novel is (1) centrally interested in the experience and growth of (2) its teenage protagonist(s), (3) whose dramatized choices, actions, and concerns drive the (4) story, and it is (5) narrated with relative immediacy to that teenage perspective."

As kid-lit, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie falters on #1 and #5. Our narrator is a pre-teen and her actions drive the story but there is a distance between Flavia’s experiences and the reader. Flavia's youth is a tool to develop the mystery rather than the central issue of the story. As a child, Flavia is able to do and say what adults might not, which adds an interesting element, but the author's focus seems to lie in the period details and his depiction of class and society rather than what it's like to be an 11 year old girl.

Regardless of how it is categorized, I look forward to seeing where Bradley takes Flavia in the second of the Buckshaw Chronicles, The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, due out in March 2010. Also check out the author's website to join the Flavia fan club.

Author: Bradley, Alan
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: 2009