January 2022
This is my first book read for the Book Girls -Lifetime of Reading Challenge This month's theme is Novels With a Child Protagonist.
I read this book when it first came out and immediately fell in love with Flavia. Eleven years old, part Miss Marple, part Dr. Frankenstein, Flavia uses her obsession with science to solve mysteries and create havoc. This is the first book in this very creative series of ten. We begin in the summer of 1950 at the grand mansion of Buckshaw, near Bishop's Lacey, a small town in England. The once grand mansion has fallen on hard times after the disappearance of Harriet, Flavia's mother, in 1941. In this book, Flavia is left to her own devices, riding her bike into town and free to investigate a series of seemingly unrelated events.
A dead bird is found on the front doorstep with an odd stamp impaled on its beak. Father is heard arguing with a stranger during the night. A man is found dead in a cucumber patch in the garden the next morning. Everyone seems to have something to hide, especially when more than one person in the house confesses to the murder. Flavia is determined to help Inspector Hewitt solve the murder.
Rereading this book was like visiting an old friend. I purchased a copy for the High School Library in which I was working when it was published and every teen, I recommended it to loved it. There's a cunning and naiveté about Flavia that at times had me laughing out loud. Her experiments on her unsuspecting sisters, poisoning Ophelia's lipstick and recording her findings is hilarious. Bradley has a talent for staying in character for his writing that is not easy to do as a male 80 years old. Bradley talks about Flavia as if she co-writes the series and tells him what is happening next. You'll have to read the second book, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, to find out.
Alan Bradley was born in Toronto, Ont. and grew up in the pleasant lakeside town of Cobourg, Ont. After a long career in television broadcasting, he took early retirement from the University of Saskatchewan to write full-time. He has published many children’s 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 has also written several screenplays and taught university-level courses in screenwriting. He was the recipient of the first Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award for Children’s Literature. After writing for several years on the Maltese island of Gozo, Alan Bradley now lives on the Isle of Man.
Blogpost 1. about the Book Girls Lifetime of Reading Challenge
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For more information about Alan Bradley and the mystery series, click here
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