Book Review - Alan Bradley's Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd
Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd by Alan Bradley
Published by: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: September 20th, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy
Canada and Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy are behind Flavia! Some might say expelled, Flavia might say freed. She expected a ticker tape parade, all hail the returning heir of Buckshaw! Instead she arrives to the bleak news that her father is ill in hospital. But he's her dad, he's always been there for her, he'll be fine while she avoids home as much as possible because dealing with her sisters and her cousin Undine is too much to contemplate. Therefore a murder landing right in her lap is a wonderful distraction from what's actually happening at home. So how did she get involved in yet another case? Well, Flavia gladly agreed to run an errand for Cynthia Richardson, the vicar’s wife. Flavia hopped on her trusty stead Gladys, probably the only one happy to see her, and set out to deliver a message to a reclusive woodworker. When she arrived at Roger Sambridge's house she found the seventy year old man crucified like St. Peter on his bedroom door. This seemed quite out of the ordinary, and it's obviously Flavia's first crucifixion, so she immediately set to searching the premise before reporting the murder to the police. All she found was a disinterested cat and a set of children's books by Oliver Inchbold, an author who was interestingly pecked to death by seagulls. Or at least Flavia finds that very interesting. One of the books is inscribed to Carla Sherrinford-Cameron, someone Flavia knows. What's more, Carla's aunt was Inchbald's paramour and also died in a freak accident. One freak accident could maybe be accounted for, but two, Flavia knows something is up and she knows that Roger Sambridge's reclusive neighbors are hiding something. Something Flavia is determined to uncover, rumors of witches be damned! Anything and everything to not face going home and dealing with the fact that her father might be sicker than she is hoping. Anything to delay the intrustion of reality for one more minute.
When you look at the beautiful jewel colored books written by Alan Bradley on your bookshelf there's always one that stands out like a sore thumb. Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd doesn't just stand out for it's appearance but for it's content. While the events are important for the proceeding books, so much of what happens between it's covers feel bleak and unnecessary. Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd throws Flavia back onto the shores of blighty with a desperate need to forget she ever went to Canada. From the author's point of view, not the readers. Because Bradley quickly dispatches with references to Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy, going so far as to quickly dispense with the teacher who accompanied Flavia to continue her education in a less formal manner. It feels like it's an attempt to return Flavia to the status quo, and yet everything that happens to her seems to be Bradley going out of his way to make sure that the status can never be quo again. The most human and therefore endearing aspect of Flavia is how she interacts with her family. By having her more adult and independent, more willing to lie in order to push her family aside means that she's cold. She's not lovably quirky like Sherlock Holmes in season one of Sherlock, she's an asshole, like Sherlock Holmes in season three of Sherlock. If this was done to somehow humble her when Bradley unceremoniously killed off her father, well, it failed. Because it just pissed me off. There was no earthly reason to kill off her father. None. At. All. It was a punch that missed it's mark. But so much of this book misses the mark. There are so many unfinished ideas that it felt scattered. You knew where it was going and what would happened but there seemed a lot of loose ends left loose, the explanation being that "life isn't ever that neat" isn't satisfying, it's annoying. This is FICTION, we can have all the closure we want and need! We don't need reality when we're following a precocious preteen sleuth with more chemistry knowledge than all the scientists in the world combined. As it is, it's a pretty thin veneer of reality we're working with here!
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