{"id":5344,"date":"2023-11-06T06:53:16","date_gmt":"2023-11-06T14:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5344"},"modified":"2023-11-06T06:53:16","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T14:53:16","slug":"amanda-flower-i-heard-a-fly-buzz-when-i-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/amanda-flower-i-heard-a-fly-buzz-when-i-died\/","title":{"rendered":"Amanda Flower: I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emily Dickinson #2<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I hardly ever think the second book in a series is better than the first, but in this case, I do.\u00a0 Amanda Flower introduced Emily Dickinson as a detective in the first audacious book. She detects with her maid, Willa Noble.\u00a0 While the first book was mostly about Willa and her family, this one is more a melding of the two women\u2019s lives, centering on a visit by Ralph Waldo Emerson to the home of Emily\u2019s brother, Austin, and his new wife, Susan.<\/p>\n

As the story opens Austin and Susan have just returned from their honeymoon, and Emily insists that Willa help them out for the week, preparing the house for Emerson\u2019s arrival.\u00a0 She blithely insists Willa can do her work at her house when she\u2019s finished for the day at Austin\u2019s.\u00a0 One feature of this book, a bit more than the first, is Emily\u2019s lack of awareness of the different life of a servant, and the constraints under which they function.\u00a0 She\u2019s constantly putting Willa into situations where no other maid would find herself and where Willa is supremely uncomfortable. This friction, mostly undiscerned by Emily herself, adds depth to the story.<\/p>\n

Emily is so open minded and fair she herself sees no class distinctions, but of course, she\u2019s alone in this pre-Civil War world.\u00a0 Willa gives Emily an entr\u00e9e into the lives of some of the servants; and Emily, vice versa, gives Willa at least a fly\u2019s eye view of the behavior of the upper classes.\u00a0 Because Willa is a maid, she is often able to be almost invisible and overhear many important conversations.<\/p>\n

The murder, when it happens, is the death of Emerson\u2019s unpleasant secretary, a man who had seemingly randomly been punched in the face by a peddler the day before his death. As more and more comes out about the man, the more unpleasant he seems \u2013 it remains for Emily and Willa to discover which of the people he\u2019s offended, lied to, or betrayed that actually killed him.<\/p>\n

Flower does a wonderful job of establishing the time and setting, including things like the travelling peddler who supplies the kind of potions and trinkets we would probably pick up today at Target.\u00a0 She also does a wonderful job of bringing the reader into Emily\u2019s family \u2013 her strict father, her dutiful sister, Lavinia, her mother, who appears to have some sort of mental illness, and Emily herself, who leaves scraps of her poetry around and often goes into a sort of trance as her words take her somewhere else.<\/p>\n

Emerson at the time would have been one of the most well known literary figures in the country, and his reception at Amherst reflects his status, as do the number of aspiring writers wanting to show him their work.\u00a0 Flower also amusingly brings in Louisa May Alcott as a character.\u00a0 The practical Alcott, who writes her stories to support her family, doesn\u2019t think much of Emily\u2019s airy fairy poetry pursuits.<\/p>\n

This book is much better paced than the first, with an excellent mystery at the center of things, relying on golden age tropes like poison, red herrings, and mistaken beliefs about some of the players involved in the story.\u00a0 Through Emily\u2019s brilliance and doggedness, aided by the practicality of the loyal Willa, the two women find the solution to the murder.\u00a0 This book was a sharp and enjoyable read.\u00a0\u00a0— Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

Note: for those interested, here’s a link to the Dickinson poem<\/a> used for the title.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emily Dickinson #2 I hardly ever think the second book in a series is better than the first, but in this case, I do.\u00a0 Amanda Flower introduced Emily Dickinson as a detective in the first audacious book. She detects with her maid, Willa Noble.\u00a0 While the first book was mostly about Willa and her family, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[709,189,895,10,1435,1438,1439,1437,1276,1436],"class_list":["post-5344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-amanda-flower","tag-berkley","tag-emily-dickinson","tag-historical","tag-i-heard-a-fly-buzz-when-i-died","tag-louise-may-alcott","tag-poetry","tag-ralph-waldo-emerson","tag-robin-agnew","tag-traditional-detection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5344"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5378,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5344\/revisions\/5378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}