As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

I have absolutely loved this series…peeking in on Flavia\’s life and crazy adventures; but this book was a complete letdown. It was slow, it was uninteresting, she was bored-I was bored, she wanted to go back home-and I CERTAINLY wanted to go back \”home\” to the Flavia we all know and love, with her family and her friends Gladys and the handyman, and her beloved sanctuary: her \”laboratory\”. I can\’t begin to express how disappointed I was in this book. It felt as though the author\’s heart wasn\’t in it. I know mine wasn\’t, in struggling through it. It would be my advice to skip this one and go on to his next Flavia adventure, hoping that it returns in all it\’s Flavia flourish.

I\’ve been enjoying this series from the beginning, and I think this one was one of the best. By sending Flavia away to school, it gave the book a freshness–there was a new setting as well as a whole new cast of characters. And because they were as new to Flavia as to the reader, she doesn\’t know who to trust or believe–everyone is suspect as she navigates her new role at school and the mystery surrounding the body in her chimney. Bradley does a good job of showing Flavia\’s growth as she starts to mature and age, but still maintains the child that she is–her moments of sudden glee and sudden homesickness. I look forward to watching Flavia continue to grow into the young woman, chemist, and sleuth that she is obviously meant to be.

September 1951 and 12 year-old Flavia de Luce has been sent to Canada, to attend the same school where her mother went many years before. Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy, outside of Toronto, seems rigid with rules, and if you’ve followed Flavia as I have, that does not seem the best place for our precocious heroine. It doesn’t start out well. Flavia arrives late at night, and the matron lets her in. The headmistress appears at the head of the stairs: “ ‘Who is it, Fitzgibbon?’ she asked, in a voice that suggested she fed on peaches and steel.” Flavia is taken to her new room, and on the very first night, a body wrapped in a Union Jack is dislodged from her chimney. A desiccated body clutching an angel pendant. Flavia naturally pockets the pendant, no sense leaving that for the police. And then she finds out that 3 girls have disappeared from the school. Is one of them her chimney-lass? As always, in this, her 7th novel, Flavia de Luce is intelligent and curious. She can jump to conclusions, and the conclusions aren’t always right, but she, above all, reveres the scientific process. Alan Bradley is excellent at describing Flavia’s leaping and whirling mind: “Feigning stupidity was one of my specialties. If stupidity were theoretical physics, then I would be Albert Einstein.” Unfortunately, and I am surprised to write this, but “As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust” is not a 5-star mystery for me. That’s a first for a Flavia story. I don’t think it’s because Flavia is in a new location, far from Buckshaw, her dilapidated home, and her usual cast of English eccentrics. It’s because there is too much explaining, maybe too many characters taking up valuable story-telling time. Also, a couple minor mysteries – or questions for Flavia to answer – seem to take away from the main mystery, that of the missing girls. Or maybe that isn’t the main mystery. Not affecting my review, but I dislike the new Bantam Books paperback. I don’t blame Alan Bradley for which publisher he chooses to go with, but this regularly sized paperback is a bulky 389 pages and seems made to last through only one reading. Typical Flavia: “The hours trudged by with chains on their ankles.” I can highly recommend books 1-6 in the series. Here\’s #6: The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches: A Flavia de Luce Novel Happy Reader

I loved the earlier Flavia de Luce novels, though the one right before this less so. This one hinted at some things, barely covered others, and left too many unresolved. Rather than adding to the mystery, or leaving me wanting more, it left me disappointed. The author, and certainly the editor, should have caught the inconsistency regarding King George at the end of the first novel in the series, and the incorrect call backs to it in the others.

This is the first Flavia de Luce book that I’ve been able to finish. There are excellent synopses at Amazon and Goodreads, so here’s my review. I chose to read this, because the synopsis promises a break from its English settings, with new characters and adventures in Canada. I still wonder why a boarding school in Canada versus a long-established institution in a historical city in Europe. As I read, I was adjusting to the author’s style and to the precocious but prickly hero. Soon a body wrapped in a Union Jack is revealed in an exciting scene. The body’s condition in the given setting is so unbelievable that I actually laughed. Then I realized that I was only at the 10% Kindle mark, and reality and logic just vanished. My murder mystery metamorphosed—transmogrified is more precise—into a fantastical YA story. If I were reading a physical book, I’d have thrown it at a wall. Why? It’s still 2020–the worst year of my life—and I’d resolved to finish every book I started. Three days until 2021. I was so close. So I made myself a double martini and bought the Audible version. Jayne Entwhistle is a wonderful narrator, who is skilled at voice-acting, so I happily listened as she read the YA urban fantasy. I liked learning about Flavia de Luce, the supporting characters, the boarding school, etc. Whilst listening, I chose to ignore illogical characterizations, absence of clues, other unbelievable events, oddball situations, etc. Happily, it served me well to just go with fantastical YA sort-of mystery. 2 stars for the book, 5 stars for narrator Jayne Entwhistle, and 3 stars overall.

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