A Foray into Y/A (Part II): The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Like my other "foray into Y/A," The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley is a mystery, and a delightful one at that.

(Note: I hesitate to call it Y/A because it is quite intricate and very adult-friendly, but when I was working at a bookshop, we were to always put it there so let's run with that.)

When I first picked this up in the Mysterious Bookshop on a lunch break from the NYU Summer Publishing Institute, I was rather unimpressed by the blurb but absolutely captivated by the cover. It had no jacket and that brilliantly beautiful (while also disturbing) illustration of a dead bird with a stamp on its beak.

And thank the mystery gods for that one... Bradley's Flavia de Luce is a most unlikely heroine (and similar to Larsson's Lisbeth Salander in that unlikeliness only). She is merely 11, the youngest of three daughters (like moi), and has an obsessive penchant for chemistry (which leads her into pranks on items like her sister's lipstick).

In The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the first installment of this now series, Flavia (and her trusted bike Gladys) zoom around Bishop's Lacey (a blissfully British sounding town) in order to solve two mysteries. First, a man dies in her backyard, gasping out his very last words to Flavia herself. This mystery and the caricatured clues that surround it (a Norwegian bird, a rare stamp, a pie) lead her to poke the murder of her father's old professor at Greyminster, which dear old Mr. de Luce may be involved with himself. Naturally, in true mystery fashion, the two are connected and will be neatly sorted out.

Admittedly, the mystery is a bit contrived, but aren't all great mysteries so? It is the classic elements of this story that liken Flavia far more to the impeccable Sherlock Holmes than to the now-kitschy (but formerly wonderful) Nancy Drew. The mystery is precisely laid out, and is almost more realistic in its oft-criticized predictability. The reader is given the same clues Flavia is so that the reader can solve it at the same speed that Flavia does. Refreshing to be sure in an era of mysteries where absurd twists come out of just about nowhere.

I can't wait to meet up with Miss Flavia yet again in The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, due out March 8, 2010. (She even has her own fan club after just one novel!)

A Mercy, Toni Morrison

It’s easy to come to these two conclusions: Toni Morrison hates men. Toni Morrison hates white people. If you read her work with a certain slant, you could probably even support these two rather simplistic hypotheses. (And if you fit into either category, you may even slump away from the text feeling impossibly but inexplicably guilt-ridden.)

But Morrison is simply not that simple. Her works, to be cliché, are like onions. Maybe the world’s biggest onion. Peel one layer away, and then there’s another. And another, and another, and another. Pretty soon you are cringing with every meticulously chosen dagger of a word, but you just can’t stop reading.

I’ll make a little confession before I go on: I listened to this book on CD during my brief stint as a commuting bookseller. But I don’t think it counts as cheating since Morrison’s voice is far more powerful and haunting than the mousy one in my head. Her voice rolls over what can better be described as lyrics than words, singing the parts that are sweet (few) and drumming in the parts that are harrowing (many).

I still contend that Paradise is Morrison's best, but A Mercy is a close contender. (NYT disagrees.) It is told in the Paradise-like fashion, with chapters alternating perspectives in a tightly wound story. Unlike most of her works, which take place in the twentieth century, this one takes place in the early colonial years. Morrison, I think, seems more suited to the 1960s than the 1690s.

But what is most impressive in her rendering of the 1690s is what she does not do. It is a historical era that could easily lend itself to stereotypes and caricatures, and Morrison deftly and masterfully avoids them. Lena, an unfree Native American, is tragically beautiful yet commits deplorable acts. Sorrow, a red-headed floozy, proves a dedicated mother. Jacob Vaark, the man in charge of them all, despises the slave-trade but benefits from it. Florens, the black slave-girl whose story brings them all together, has a dreaming soul and yet is capable of bloody and frivolous sins.

With this cast of complicated characters, Morrison creates a masterpiece and maintains her place as one of America's greatest writers. A Mercy will surely join the ranks of the revered (though probably hotly contested) contemporary classics.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson

I bet that if you are in a social circle that even looks askance at books, you’ve heard a thousand times over that you must, must, must read Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

This (deserved) international success is somewhat bittersweet for on Larsson's Millenium trilogy, of which this is the first. Larsson, a sci-fi fanatic, wrote just these three crime thrillers before he died in 2004 at the age of 50. The entire trilogy was published posthumously to a flurry of legal battles stemming from his will. But thank goodness most of the bitterness is gone... The last in the trilogy is arriving on American shores on Halloween.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, we’ve got to tackle The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The “heroine” is unlike any other. In fact, the illicit drug homonym of heroine would probably describe Lisbeth Salander a bit better. She is all sorts of screwy but has just enough humanity to make the reader love her.

Before Lisbeth is introduced, the reader is drawn into a web of financial intrigue, which I could have done without. In fact, the first 100 pages and the last 100 pages could have been deleted, but I suppose some people like finance.

The real meat of the novel takes place in the (ice cold) heart of Sweden. It follows Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist reeling from a disgraced image from that whole financial problem. He takes on a freelance mission to write a biography of a corporate powerhouse of a family. Surreptitiously, at one member’s behest, he investigates the disappearance and presume murder of the patriarch's niece. Naturally, he encounters a whole bunch of crazies in that family.

What ensues is a perfect mixture of detective work, illicit romance, and violent intrigue with a perfect amount of Criminal Minds and Law and Order: SVU tossed in. And it doesn't deliver a solution that comes out of left field. If you pay close attention, you can probably fit most of the pieces together as Blomkvist simultaneously does so. The full truth, however, is absolutely startling when revealed.

Is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo great literature? Nope, definitely not. But it’s smart, it’s original, and it’s one hell of a read. I’ll be getting my hands on the sequel pretty quickly.

351 Books of Irma Arcuri, David Bajo

There are very few books I truly dislike. (I’ll avoid “hate.” My mother taught me better than that.)  Every novel reflects, for the most part, the hard work and imagination of the author, and thus usually possesses many redeeming novels. But this is one of those few. 

So first, how I came to it in the first place.  I was coming off the high of The Shadow of the Wind.  Having already read most of Arturo Perez-Reverte and Matthew Pearl, I was in dire need of some sort of dark and ominous mystery with some crazy book(s) at the center. 

Enter bookstore coworkers who assure me that David Bajo’s 351 Books of Irma Arcuri is the perfect prescription.  I in turn blindly recommend it because of their recommendation to fellow Shadow of the Wind-loving customers.  Then I crack it open...

...and it is just awful.  I make it a rule to always finish books (with the exception of Bolano's 2666) so I stuck it out.  Bottom line? It reads like a grocery list of sex scenes. Now, I am no prude but if Bajo wanted to write a romance novel, he just should have called it what it was. There was almost no concentration on the actual books of Irma, except how they were made (which was the one redeeming aspect of this novel).

The basic premise is that this man’s on-again, off-again lover disappears and leaves her books to him.  The story lineshould then follow him on some literary journey as he finds more clues in all of the books, following the penciled-in clues alluded to in the narrative. There is some of that, but not enough.  Or there should be extensive, lit-based travels to find this elusive beauty.  Again, some but not enough.  There is just a lot of running, having sex, and filling space.

Like Umberto Eco’s The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, it is based on a novel concept (pun intended) but it falls short of its potential.

The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz-Zafon

I hesitate to even write this review. I just don’t think my ramblings could possibly do any justice to Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind.

But I suppose I’ll start with my reluctance to read it. About a year ago my best friend’s dad Twoey recommended it, but I just brushed him off and figured we wouldn’t have the same literary tastes. But when I started as a bookseller at BookHampton, people (and most importantly, co-workers) were still talking about it. So I made the leap and committed… to the paperback.

At about page 10, I was completely and utterly hooked. It came with me in the Long Island Sound and basically everywhere else short of the driver's seat of my car (when I was listening to A Mercy) until I finally stayed up ‘til 3 a.m. to finish it up. (Confession: I had a related nightmare that night.)

Ruiz Zafón winds his reader through the dark and windy roads of Barcelona, weaving together a plot that is as intricate and interesting as the arhictecture of the city itself. Its parallel love stories and mysteries between two sets of characters in two different times could have entered to the realm of cheesy, but Ruiz Zafón keeps them on the right side of literature. Not a detail spared and not a beat missed.

I’m going to stop there. Just read it. And (inevitably) fall in love. With Spain. With Julian Carax. With the Cemetary of Forgotten Books. With Daniel. But if I told you any more, I’d be robbing you of the chance to experience it in all its gothic glory.

And now I can’t wait to read the prequel/sequel Angel’s Game. Keep an eye out for the review!

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery

During my brief (but wonderful) stint as a bookseller, I grilled my customers about what they were reading. The Elegance of the Hedgehog (an arguably bizarre title yet still a summer favorite) fared as such: About 75% of the people I talked to just couldn’t get over it and came in asking for Gourmet Rhapsody, pre-release date.

BUT about 25% just couldn’t get through it at all. Unfortunately (now fortunately) I had already bought it when the naysayers came in, so I stuck it out. And this Parisian rendezvous proved a delight although, quite frankly, heart-wrenching as well.

It fulfills the best French stereotypes while acknowledging (mockingly) the worst. It is indulgent but not frivolous. It is intelligent but not pompous. It is philosophical but not condescending. It’s 300+ pages go as quickly and smoothly as a 3-hour lunch with your very best friend over wine and madelines (with a lovely bouquet of Madame Michel's camellias to boot).

Admittedly there is a lot of philosophy that could bog down the book. But press on through it. It works best as a way into the topsy-turvy brains of the duo of narrators rather than the ramblings of dear Ms. Barbery.

And finally, it features three characters whom I just do not want to let go: Madame Michel, a stout, lit-and-film loving concierge; Paloma, a 13-year-old in the most extreme teenage angst I have ever read; and finally, Kakuro Ozu, the new Japanese tenant who introduces much needed zen into both their lives while also learning from them. In fact, I have so enjoyed their company that I’m holding off a bit before I start my next literary endeavor so that they can linger in my imagination just a little longer, unfettered and unbothered.

(P.S. What, you ask, is this so-called "elegance of the hedgehog'? Relax, dear reader. It is answered for you: "Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she's covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary - and terribly elegant.")

[Jillian]