The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

One of the story’s main themes is Flavia’s dysfunctional family. The de Luce family maintains a very proper English type of dysfunction, with silence and emptiness rather than shouting and flinging of objects, though the sisters do quarrel regularly. For the most part, they all lead separate lives. Laurence neglects his daughters and sequesters himself away in his study, absorbed in his stamp collection. Having been sent away at a young age to boarding school, Laurence has no idea of how a loving family should function. Flavia has normal desires for a family that expresses love and affection for one another, but she knows deep in her heart that they are incapable of it. Even Flavia cannot bring herself to give her sisters a compliment, to express her admiration for Ophelia’s piano playing. Flavia feels that her older sisters began this exchange of insults and deprecation, so she feels compelled to respond in kind.

This lack of familial empathy and connection stems from the loss of Harriet. Flavia has no memories of her mother, who died when she was only a year old, but Harriet’s presence, through objects that were once hers, is felt as well as her absence. Flavia first discovers her mother’s