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Speaking from Among the Bones
475 pages
A delightfully macabre romp through a mid-century English village, guided by a brilliant, chemistry-obsessed child who prefers corpses to her older sisters.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping into a dusty, secret-filled English crypt with the smartest, most delightfully morbid companion imaginable. The experience is brisk and endlessly charming, driven by a fiercely intelligent eleven-year-old narrator whose mind operates in chemical formulas and dry, precocious wit. Beneath the cozy, mid-century village atmosphere and the darkly comedic observations about death and annoying older sisters, there is a surprising undercurrent of vulnerability and poignant coming-of-age isolation. The prose sparkles with sharp metaphors and eccentric observations, making the damp chill of a church vault feel wonderfully inviting. It is a perfect match for anyone who loves their traditional whodunits laced with a healthy dose of eccentricity, gothic undertones, and unapologetic brilliance.
- Mood
- delightfully macabre
- dusty
- eccentric
- cozy
- Tone
- wry
- precocious
- darkly comedic
- affectionate
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- the isolation of brilliance · small-town eccentricities · coming of age · family secrets · morbid curiosity
- The writing
- The prose is sharp, highly observant, and laced with sophisticated chemical metaphors and dry British wit.
- The arc
- The journey moves from gleeful, morbid curiosity through moments of genuine vulnerability, culminating in a startling revelation that shakes the protagonist's world.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love classic English village mysteries but crave a fiercely intelligent, unapologetically eccentric narrator.
Content notes
- murder
- corpses
- mild peril
- parental loss
About the book
Eleven-year-old amateur detective and ardent chemist Flavia de Luce is used to digging up clues, whether they’re found among the potions in her laboratory or between the pages of her insufferable sisters’ diaries. What she is not accustomed to is digging up bodies. Upon the five-hundredth anniversary of St. Tancred’s death, the English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey is busily preparing to open its patron saint’s tomb. Nobody is more excited to peek inside the crypt than Flavia, yet what she finds will halt the proceedings dead in their tracks: the body of Mr Collicutt, the church organist, his face grotesquely and inexplicably masked. Who held a vendetta against Mr Collicutt, and why would they hide him in such a sacred resting place? The irrepressible Flavia decides to find out. And what she unearths will prove there’s never such thing as an open-and-shut case.
Description from Open Library.
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