Snow, Books and Cake

I just finished a mystery novel and I’m not quite sure what to think. Warum?

First, there’s mega exposition on minutiae going on for pages and pages. Much of it seems superfluous to the action at hand.  My impatience with this probably has a metric fuck-ton to do with literary preferences. I like minimalists like Raymond Carver. Alan Bradley is NOT a minimalist.

Mind, I can go big for more wordy writers but my tastes run more to the Catherynne M. Valentes and Jack Kerouacs of this world.

Second, I didn’t know this when I checked it out from the library but it’s apparently, amongst other things, YA—young adult. That’s not a dealbreaker for me—I LOVED Madeleine L’Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. Bradley’s book, The Sweetness At the Bottom of the Pie, would’ve been, possibly, more engaging for me if the protagonist had been, say, 18 instead of 11.

Also, (I suppose this is my third kvetch), Flavia, the protagonist, was light years more knowledgeable and emotionally advanced than any 11 year old I’ve ever known. Sure, a tween being that erudite, canny and in possession of such a brilliant memory is possible. Honestly though, she comes off more as some ultra inquisitive, grad level MIT student than a kid in rural 1950s England.

It is the summer of 1950–and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. (source)

Cake

Having said all this,  Sweetness was decent enough. I’d recommend it for studious teens keen on chemistry and murder mysteries. Me? Maybe it’s just where I’m at right now. January is always a hard month. The cold, snow, grey skies and anniversaries (TAB’s birthday and our wedding) bring on the melancholy morbs. I’m not inclined to pick up another of his stories.

I just checked out a new Jasper Fforde novel, The Constant Rabbit.

England, 2022. 



There are 1.2 million human-size rabbits living in the UK. 

They can walk, talk, drive cars, and they like to read Voltaire, the result of an Inexplicable Anthropomorphizing Event fifty-five years before.

A family of rabbits is about to move into Much Hemlock, a cozy little village in Middle England where life revolves around summer fetes, jam making, gossipy corner stores, and the oh-so-important Best Kept Village awards.

No sooner have the rabbits arrived than the villagers decide they must depart, citing their propensity to burrow and breed, and their shameless levels of veganism. (source)

Allegory much? Will this be Animal Farm-esque with a side of humor? Is it even possible to make bigotry funny? If you’re Mel Brooks—SURE! Given today's snow (rain later), I'll stay inside and read all about constant rabbits.