Michael - Thursday
It’s hard to imagine that anyone reading this blog has not read an Agatha Christie novel. She's the largest selling fiction author of all time, and her 66 books have sold over 2 billion copies.
Her writing has been analysed from every imaginable point of
view. Someone even discovered a link between word patterns and sentence length to
the generation of tension. Modern critics have been harsh, claiming that
her books are little more than dressed up puzzles with no real characterisation
or attempt to address the reality of the world in which she lived. PD
James – who's known for her style and characters – was asked about that in an
interview at Crimefest one year. She thought for a moment, and then in her
brilliant way put it in a nutshell. She said something like, “Well, it may be
true that her books are not particularly deep. But let me ask you this. You are
on a long international flight and land at some out of the way place, where you
are told you will have to spend the night because of some technical issue. When
you reach your hotel room, you find two books next to your bed. One is an
Agatha Christie novel you haven’t read before, and the other is the latest
Booker prize winner. Which would you choose to spend the evening with?”
In 2015, on the 125 year anniversary of Christie's birth, The Irish Times invited a number of mystery writers to write short pieces on some aspect of her work.
Stanley and I were invited to join authors like Val McDermid, John Banville,
and Yrsa Sigurdardottir to give a personal take. We decided to talk about her
work set on the location of her travels. We'd really have liked to focus on
Africa, but there's only so much you can say about Death on the Nile and all of it has already been said. Anyway,
Egypt is a long way north from us. So this is what we wrote.
Christie visiting Egypt |
On the Empie Exhibition trip |
In fact, she was an adventurous traveller. In the early 1920s
she undertook a yearlong trip with her husband Archie, as part of a team to
promote the Empire Exhibition. She learnt to surf in Cape Town, subsequently
honing her skills in Hawaii, learning to surf standing up – apparently one of
the first Brits to do that. She spent time in Egypt, and later with her
archaeologist second husband, in Iraq. She also spent time in the Canary
Islands, which some years ago held a festival in her honour.
So Christie loved the sun and the sea, and no doubt her
curiosity about foreign people and places fuelled her fiction. But what of her settings?
Indeed, most of her stories take place in England, but some of the most famous
ones have exotic locations – Murder on
the Orient Express, Death on the Nile,
They Came to Baghdad. However, it
seems that Agatha Christie’s only connection with southern Africa was her
surfing visit to Cape Town, never setting any of her stories in this part of
the world. More’s the pity."
Bathing in Cape Town |
Then, a few weeks ago, we received an email from someone who
clearly knows much more about Agatha Christie and her work than we do. She
mentioned several more novels and short stories set in North Africa and the
Middle East, including Death Comes to an
End, a historical novel set in Egypt that has no European characters. And she
pointed out that Christie had indeed set a novel (partly) in South Africa – The Man in the Brown Suit. Published in
1924, it was her fourth book. Although the mystery starts in Hyde Park tube station, Anne, the
protagonist, follows the clues to a steamer bound for Cape Town. Clearly Cape
Town had a big impact on Christie when she visited on her trip. This is how Anne expresses it:
Table Mountain from the sea |
I don’t suppose that
as long as I live I shall forget my first sight of Table Mountain. I got up
frightfully early and went out on deck. I went right up to the boat deck, which
I believe is a heinous offence, but I decided to dare something in the cause of
solitude. We were just steaming into Table Bay. There were fleecy white clouds
hovering above Table Mountain, and nestling on the slopes below, right down to
the sea, was the sleeping town, gilded and bewitched by the morning sunlight.
It made me catch my
breath and have that curious hungry pain inside that seizes one sometimes when
one comes across something that’s extra beautiful. I’m not very good at
expressing these things, but I knew well enough that I had found, if only for a
fleeting moment, the thing that I had been looking for ever since I left Little
Hampsly. Something new, something hitherto undreamed of, something that
satisfied my aching hunger for romance.
A scene of the TV version |
Still, South Africa was a means to an end, not the target of
the story. Anne points that out herself:
By the way, I should
like to make it clear here and now that this story will not be a story of South
Africa. I guarantee no genuine local colour—you know the sort of thing—half a
dozen words in italics on every page. I admire it very much, but I can’t do it.
After Cape Town, the action moves to Rhodesia where Anne has
more adventures. The book becomes more of a thriller than a mystery, and
received some sniffs from the critics on that account. But Christie received ₤500 for the first
publication and that paid for her first car, a Morris Cowley. No doubt it’s made
a few more bob since then.
Thanks for the heads-up, Bernadette!
Wonderful, Michael!! How great to learn more about someone we think we know. And, as I recall, that car has a story too. Was that one--when he husband left her for another woman--she pushed off a cliff to fake a suicide? I know she did that with a car. And then hid out in a hotel for a few days, only to emerge in full possession of her gifts. Today she would be richer than JK Rowling, and that's saying something!!!
ReplyDeleteOh, and KUDOS to PD James for her put down of the literary snobs, who consider any book that has entertainment value beneath their dignity! If you want to impress them, you must write with mellifluous sentences a story in which nothing happens. In other words, colorless and boring.
I think that was the disappearance at Harrogate. But I want to delve into some more background/biographies.
ReplyDeleteI was also impressed with PD James response. If anyone, she had a right to support the character driven approach to mysteries. But the really good people don't feel obliged to put down others to improve their own status!
I confess I knew about her surfing escapades! I will arm wrestle Christie bashers to the ground. Poirot and Marple sustain day time ITV. One of my desert island books is Towards Zero. Fabulous book.
ReplyDeleteEarlier this week I saw a masterful hour-long show on PBS featuring David Suchet--the iconic on screen embodiment of Hercule Poirot--searching for a better understanding of Agatha Christie. It took him to her family archives and a fascinating interview with her grandson. Her Harrogate adventure remains somewhat of a mystery but most likely was linked to her husband having just asked her for a divorce. She did not send her car over a cliff, but just abandoned it in an eerie place. I heartily recommend seeking out that show for a different take on AC. Here's the linkhttps://www.pbs.org/show/mystery-agatha-christie-david-suchet/
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jeff! I'll certainly watch it if I'm able to!
DeleteSadly not in South Africa...
DeleteLoved this post! Definitely her books win out if given a choice between a Booker prize winner and hers, I'd opt for hers. Like her so much that I've read her, "Come tell me how you live" the story of her time out on a dig with her husband and also the stories of her life.
ReplyDeleteShe was certainly an interesting person!
ReplyDeleteGosh, I"m raining on the parade. When I was 19, I was reading one of her books and I saw anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia, so I closed the book and took it back to the library. That was it. I reached my limit and tolerance.
ReplyDeleteEveryone has their own taste and patience and I reached my limit.
Did you feel it was the author's or the character's viewpoint? She lived in a different era, but that doesn't justify those viewpoints, of course.
DeleteI thought it was the author's point of view. The writing wasn't in a character's mind. It was part of the narrative. Also, I had read that she softened her views on Jewish people during WWII and after the atrocities, but Christopher Hitchens visited her house for a dinner in the early 1970s (I think) and said that anti-Semitism permeated the air.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I have read many critiques online of her writing which discussed her racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism, including by readers of many nationalities and people of color. Some decided to read her books, knowing this about her views; some decided not to read her books.
The original title of one of them was horrendous, very racism. The publisher changed it in 1940 in some countries, not all. I read the title was just changed elsewhere.
But that title alone would have turned me off forever.