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Those who have read the previous novel in this series (THE DEAD IN THEIR VAULTED ARCHES) will recall its shocking ending - Flavia de Luce, eleven-year-old detective, chemist, and aspiring poisoner, must leave her beloved and mouldering home, Buckshaw, for boarding school in Toronto. As this one opens, Flavia is aboard the RMS Scythia headed for Quebec City, thereafter to Toronto and Miss Bodycote's Female Academy. Needless to say, she is not happy about any of this, though she is cheered considerably when a mummified corpse wrapped in a Union Jack falls from the chimney in the room where she is spending her first night at school.
CHIMNEY SWEEPERS is the seventh time that Flavia has been presented with at least one dead body; this is the first since she turned twelve. Perhaps it was the utter incredibility of so many prematurely dispatched corpses in the immediate vicinity of Bishop's Lacey that prompted Alan Bradley to attempt to shift Flavia off her native turf, perhaps merely the desire for a change of scene, but regardless of the motive, it proves a disappointing development.
Quite understandably, Flavia suffers from some disorientation following her forced move, but the reader ought not to feel the same way. Miss Bodycote's never comes clearly into focus - even the rambling building, a former convent, is never fully visualized. Perhaps this is the result of moving Flavia from Bishop's Lacey, an essentially literary venue, to the real city of Toronto, even if it's Toronto of sixty years ago. Readers are happy to accept the village and even fill in a few details on their own, since they've visited any number of similar places in other novels and remember them fondly. But Toronto does exist and lacks the patina of fictional familiarity. Perhaps Bradley should have chosen Prince Edward Island as the Canadian home for Miss B's.
Nor do the new characters that Bradley is able to introduce thanks to the relocation ever quite jell. Flavia makes no real friends and the few girls she even speaks to never emerge as clear individuals. Much the same can be said for the various mistresses, about whom much is promised but little delivered. By the time we get to the end of this rather long book, we are still unclear about what purpose has been served in sending Flavia so far from home.
This is not to say that all of the pleasures of the earlier books are missing. Flavia is still her mordant self and still retains her fierce independence and confidence in her ability to solve a mystery that seems to be eluding her elders. Readers who have followed her this far will surely want to follow her to Canada, but they may not want to see her remain there. She does much better in her literary childhood Eden, riding Gladys, talking to Dogger, trying to poison her sisters, and teaching herself chemistry.
§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, January 2015
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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