This arrived through my letterbox a week or so ago and I gather this is the third Flavia de Luce mystery so how I have missed the other two beats me as I read this in one sitting and simply loved it.
Flavia de Luce, and what a wonderful name for a heroine, is eleven years old and is having her fortune told by a gypsy at the Bishop's Lacey village fete. The old woman claims to see a vision of Flavia's mother, Harriet, who died on a mountainside in Tibet when Flavia was a baby and she is trying to come home. Well, to have an eleven year old eccentrically named heroine is a good start, but then to discover she had a mother who vanished in Tibet is even more intriguing and I decided that this book was going to be for me.
Flavia is determined to find out what lies behind this vision and, after knocking over a candle and accidentally setting fire to the fortune teller's tent, decides to take the gypsy back to the grounds of her home, Buckshaw, where she can camp and stay and Flavia can talk to her about her mother. However, when Flavia goes to see her next it is to find she has been brutally attacked and left for dead. Shortly afterwards another body is found - this time hanging bizarrely from a fountain in the grounds and things are beginning to get a bit too close for comfort and Flavia decides she has to use her precocious detection powers to unravel the truth.
Not only does this heroine have a wonderful name and character but she also rides a bicycle called Gladys which also endeared her to me ('the bicycle had once been called 'Hirondelle', the Swallow, a word that reminded me so much of being force fed cod-liver oil with a gag inducing spoon, that I had renamed her Gladys. Who, for goodness sake wants to ride a bicycle with aname like a sick room nurse?') - she has a spiky sense of humour and a quick mind which she certainly needs to ward off the sarcastic comments and unkindness of her sisters, Daphne and Ophelia (Daffy and Feely) a totally self centred and obnoxious pair who seem to delight in making Flavia's life a misery.
There is something very endearing about Flavia, a dauntlessness about her which keeps her going no matter how depressed and unhappy she may be feeling and she has a wonderfully philosophical outlook on life. I was very fond of her by the time I had finished Alan Bradley's book which, though I may not have given this impression, is very funny as well as being compassionate and exciting. He has a wonderful knack of describing a character so that you immediately know what they look like and how they are.
Take Tilda Mountjoy - 'Miss Mountjoy was the retired Librarian in Chief of the Bishop's Lacey Free Library where, it was said, even the books had lived in fear of her. Now, with nothing but time on her hands, she had become a freelance terror'
Her sister, Ophelia - "Feely was seventeen and ranked herself right up there with the Blessed Virgin mary, although the chief difference between them, I'm willing to bet, is that the BVM doesn't spend twenty three hours a day peering at herself in a looking glass while picking away at her face with a pair of tweezers"
I found this narrative style very engaging and its gentle humour made this reader relish every sentence and just enjoy the pleasure of reading good writing. Difficult to put into words just why this writing is so good - it just IS and is indefinable. Good writing is just to easy to read whereas bad and clunky narrative is pain inducing and hard work. Goes without saying that I now need to get hold of the other earlier two Flavia stories and read them as well and I cannot understand how I have missed out on these. My thanks to Orion for correcting my mistake.
One other thing I must mention that popped into my mind within ten minutes of meeting the characters and their location - I capture the Castle by Dodie Smith - the settings and characters are so similar. A bright sparky and clear sighted younger sister with two older siblings and a widowed father all living in a crumbling house with shut up rooms and in dire financial straits - surely Alan Bradley must have read this book and been influenced by it, I just could not get away from it all the time I was reading A Red Herring without Mustard.
About ten years ago I attended a large birthday party which was held in a huge crumbling old house in Essex, the name of which now escapes me. The building was magnificent in its decaying grandeur, huge hall with a fireplace you could roast the proverbial ox in, a toilet that was like a throne all blue and white splendour, radiators that could have graced the Titanic and barely emitted enough heat to take the chill off the huge rooms, a gloriously shabby main room with faded and spotted mirrors lining the panelled walls which made one look soft and beautiful in the light - well, it was I capture the Castle to the life and I was entranced by it all. It was not until the party was nearly over that I mentioned this to a fellow guest and was stunned to receive the reply 'Oh yes Dodie Smith used to live in the village and used to visit the house' - blimey I thought, here is the original of the Castle in the book.
OK well that has nothing whatsoever to do with this book which is sheer delight but just thought I would sling it in for your edification....
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