Thanks to freelance writer Abhilasha for this fabulous review! Make sure to meet her at the bottom.
Round and round I go, stumbling my way through the savoury layers of mystery, only to find answers at the front door. At one moment I was ticked by the imaginary, the next moment I was pulling my hair out and finally I snapped it shut, exasperated. In short? I loved it.
The Summary
Meet Flavia de Luce, the youngest daughter of three, who, at the insistence of her maternal aunt, is shipped across the Atlantic to attend the same boarding school her absent mother had attended.
Finding herself in a Canadian boarding school, starved for freedom, Flavia thinks her crime solving days and free access to chemistry are far behind. However, fate loves slight miscalculations. On the first night of her arrival, a charred corpse comes sliding down her chimney. As much as it makes Flavia excited, it also serves as a distraction to her homesickness. What ensues ahead is a middle schooler’s battle against lies, secrets and deceit as Flavia digs into missing students that nobody cares about and learns to decipher cryptic warnings from her peers.
My Review
Flavia de Luce is a little Poirot from Buckshaw, who, upon finding herself atop a seafaring ship across the Atlantic, can’t seem to put her bitter thoughts of chemistry and corpses behind. Alongside her is a pair as odd as any couple, keeping up appearances and hiding secrets. As a crime solving middle schooler, Flavia is the ahead of her years, has a knack for big words and deciphers secrets like homework.
As she arrives in the new environment of the boarding school, she faces mistaken identity, broken rules and worst of all (best for Flavia) a charred dead body before she can even have one night’s proper sleep. Bitterness dissolves into excitement.
Smart on her feet, critical of everyone and navigating the alien lands with supreme intuition, Flavia has nothing in common with her middle grade peers. She wanders the strictly monitored wards of her new Canadian school, sometimes swayed by her homesickness and sometimes driven by her desire to solve the mystery.
Albeit how well that mystery was tackled is another matter. The plot, following Flavia, was less of her journey to uncover the identity of the charred corpse and more of a personal journey to come to terms with herself, her past with her absent mother and her new environment where she carried faint hopes of finding others like her, oddballs, who she could establish a normal human relationship with. The author has done an excellent job of reflecting the lonely feelings of someone who stands out, either above or away from the crowd, yearning.
As Flavia struggles with the question of belonging, she also questions if she is ever meant to belong. It is a character of cold calculations and a warm heart. A character that will spill tears overwhelmed by emotions she does not comprehend while wanting to laugh at herself for being emotional.
Not only has it been expressed expertly, it has also been written beautifully. Alan Bradley has a knack for descriptive writing, diving into scenery with imagination, and observing everything with a witty analogy. The writing was delightful in its own way, like a happy, spirited crackle over a warm hearth. My desire to relish in every word, every sentence, slowed by reading progress considerably.
“A filament of drool appeared at the corner of Dorsey’s mouth, swinging with the motion of the train like an acrobatic spider on a thread.”
Imaginative, descriptive, witty, and spirited. If I could keep quoting, I would keep quoting. Every other line on every page is filled with such quips.
By the time my excitement over discovering this lesser known jewel of a book cooled down, I was already halfway through the story. With no one held accountable, none under suspicion and only one solid evidence in hand to keep the mystery driven, beauty becomes distraction and hunger for facts, foes and follies gets deeper. I did loose interest when the mystery aspect of the story began to fray but the character development, setting and language held it together. Here, the themes and the driving force of the book become more apparent.
This too, Bradley has explored and exposed with smarts. As Flavia struggles with her place in the world, trying to fit in and suffering from homesickness, she also rushes against all odds to uncover the truth of the charged corpse. With all cards on the table, the main theme of the story- identity, of oneself, of others, of our place in the world, is clear.
I am pretty obviously both enthralled and frustrated by Flavia and her narrative. The layers of her character make the story interesting. May it be the religious references, her interest in the chemistry or her extensive use of fancy words, all tie up the charred corpse mystery with a neat, conclusive ending. Though, these very things also distract from the flow of the story, swaying between the detective style mystery and the obscure mystery of the school and its secret organisation. I was slightly frustrated that the part of the secret organisation was only littered throughout the story to hinder the character, serving as an open-ended climax with mild feelings and unexposed truths.
This Flavia De Luce novel is going to be my fine wine, begging to be read again and savoured slowly. A story that uncovers layers of new meanings, aha-moments and wide eyes surprises the more times it is read.
As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust was a cosy mystery that belong to the classic style of layered and descriptive writing. With settings, dreary but picturesque and characters, smart but warm, it belongs to a shelf above a fireplace to be picked on quite warm nights, under fluffy blankets.
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Meet Abhilasha
A hobbit in the body of a gypsy. I travel too much, never putting down physical roots in one place for more than a couple years at a time; books are my ground zero, my home away from home. I always read online- library apps, e-books, kindle but I also own multiple copies of P&P and at least one always travels with me. I am the kind of reader that goes by TBR and doesn’t know big slumps. What is a slump but a need to re-read favorites!
