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Bezig met laden... De show van je leven (2011)door Alan Bradley
Books Read in 2013 (17) Historical Fiction (213) » 12 meer Books Read in 2014 (446) Favourite Books (1,243) Books Read in 2017 (2,722) Books Read in 2015 (2,342) British Mystery (215) Books Read in 2018 (2,814) Books Read in 2012 (72) Books Read in 2019 (3,590) Female Protagonist (821) Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. I came to this series by following the narrator, Jayne Entwistle, (who was recommended to me by a fellow librarian) from a Sophie Kinsella novel, and I’m so glad I did—it’s fabulous! This is book four in the Flavia De Luce series. Flavia is an 11 year old chemist with a passion for poisons. This book brings in a World War II element that strengthens and deepens the plot. It’s been about a year since I read ‘Flavias’ 1-3, and I remember liking the series a lot more than I liked Shadows. I was not nearly as delighted by Flavia as I had been, and found her character and the characters of her family members to be so much less interesting than they had been. Except for Dogger, everything about this novel felt like a reworking of the previous three books. I’m sure I’ll return to the series at some point but it’s certainly moved down my TBR after reading Shadows. Better than the previous one, this was full of twists and turns, yet always plausible and engaging. But best of all, I am hugely impressed with Bradley's skill: his brilliant (often hilarious!) use of metaphor and simile, his style, the laugh out loud humor, and the suspense. I am intrigued by the ongoing mysteries within the family dynamic itself, too, that are slowly being disclosed over the course of the series. I have enjoyed countless "cozies" but these are really wonderfully crafted, far above most of the cutesy, gimmicky stuff that floods the market. Intelligent, droll, and never cliched, they are a little heady, so I don't want to gobble them down one after another. But I am definitely looking forward to the next one. I’ve been in a reading funk lately, trying to read some holiday themed books to put me in the Christmas spirit and finding myself left more Grinchy than jolly by the experience. So I decided to take a break from the holiday stories and get in some light entertainment in the form of my favorite little scamp, Flavia deLuce. Only to find that the next book in the series is… set at Christmas! In retrospect, the cover art featuring a dancing skeleton in a Santa hat should have been a dead giveway, but I can only plead inattention due to upper-respiratory infection. In this installment, the deLuce family finances has forced them to allow a film crew to invade their ancestral home, while Flavia has decided on an empirical approach to determining whether Father Christmas is real, by cooking up a sort of people version of fly-paper in her chemistry lab to slather around the chimney. Meanwhile, there’s a murder, and Flavia is her usual delightfully obnoxious self in disrupting the official investigation and ferreting out the clues. Audiobook, purchased via Audible, with another fantastic performance by Jayne Entwistle.
The novel opens with Flavia skating past paintings of her long-dead relatives in Buckshaw’s portrait gallery. The east wing of her sprawling, ancestral home is unheated, she reminds us, so it was no trouble to flood the room and create her own private arena. As she skates she daydreams about a photographer stumbling upon her and snapping her photo, landing her in a famous magazine and simultaneously making her older sisters jealous and her widower father proud. The dream is burst, however, by the very real cold of her bedroom. Flavia, of course, is dreaming, and with that Bradley launches us into life at Buckshaw a few days before Christmas. Like most 11-year-old girls, Flavia is teetering on the question of Father Christmas. Her older sisters, Daphne and Ophelia, have horridly told her there’s no such person, but Flavia can’t quite believe it. So, to prove her sisters wrong she has devised a plan to catch the jolly old elf. Being the chemical whiz that she is, Flavia eschews amateur tricks such as nets and instead decides to brew a batch of birdlime, an extra-sticky glue used to hunt songbirds. Her preparations are interrupted, however, by the arrival of a film crew. Bradley’s novels are, ostensibly, mysteries. Certainly, each one builds up to a murder, allowing Flavia to insert herself into the investigation so she can, with Miss Marple-esque skills, solve the case either before or at just the same moment as the police. Usually, her investigations involve sly interviews with villagers and many trips on Gladys, her bicycle. This time around, though, the murder is at Buckshaw and much of her sleuthing can be done by snooping through guest bedrooms and strategically overhearing conversations. Despite the murder and subsequent investigation, Shadows is more about the de Luce family than anything else. It’s Christmas, after all, and along with the holiday’s religious implications are its familial ones. The de Luce family is an uncomfortable one, though, and filled with more than its share of secrets and things left unsaid. As Bradley’s series progresses, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the real plot revolves around Flavia’s simultaneous desire to understand more about the de Luces and nervousness about what she might learn. Certainly Flavia can solve a murder, but matters of love and relationships continue to puzzle her and engage us, giving Bradley’s novels a much more emotional edge than your average drawing room mystery. I Am Half-Sick of Shadows is a delicious, lighthearted holiday read best served by a crackling fireplace with warm eggnog – but please, hold the noxious compounds. This is a delightful read through and through. We find in Flavia an incorrigible and wholly lovable detective; from her chemical experiments in her sanctum sanctorum to her outrage at the idiocy of the adult world, she is unequaled. Charming as a stand-alone novel and a guaranteed smash with series followers. The book is beautifully written, with fully fleshed characters, even the minor ones such as odd-job man Dogger and Mrs. Mullet, who rules in the kitchen. Flavia de Luce may belong to a different time period, but mostly she belongs to the world of imagination, both restricting and expansive enough to allow many more visits to Buckshaw — as well as the laboratory of criminal concoctions still stewing in their juices, waiting to be unbottled in future books. Onderdeel van de reeks(en)Flavia de Luce (4) Prijzen
"Colonel de Luce, in desperate need of funds, rents his beloved estate of Buckshaw over to a film company. They will be shooting a movie over the Christmas holidays, filming scenes in the stately manse with a famous and reclusive star. She is widely despised, so it is to no one's surprise when she turns up murdered, strangled by a length of film from her own movies! With the snow raging outside and Buckshaw locked in, the house is full of suspects. But Flavia de Luce is more than ready to solve the wintry country-house murder. She'll have to be quick-witted, though, to negotiate the volatile chemicals of a cast and crew starting to crack--and locked in a house with a murderer!"-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
Deelnemer aan LibraryThing Vroege RecensentenAlan Bradley's boek I Am Half-Sick of Shadows was beschikbaar via LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Actuele discussiesGeenPopulaire omslagen
Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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Flavia is the best. I also love the wonderful humor in the books. "... we de Luces have been Roman Catholic since carriage races were all the rage."
That just cracks me up every time and that's only one example. There are countless others and of course she is fearless in pursuing clues and ideas.
I only missed Gladys in this latest installment, Flavia's trusty bicycle. ( )