Agatha Christie: An English Mystery

First of all, let me note with regard to the over-all rating, that with so few reviews a couple of negative reviews will have a disproportionately heavy impact on the review--and one's impression reading them. It certainly does not make for a representative sample in any scientific sense. This pertains to my review as well. Only many more reviews can solve this.That being said, I do indeed recommend this biography. I think it pairs well with Morgan's biography from 1986. Every great writer deserves a fresh biography every decade--at the most every two decades. So Christie--particularly in light of the fact that she is the second most successful writer ever--certainly deserves continued biographical treatment.Thompson belongs to the newer approach to biography, which is aware of itself as an imaginative, essentially hermeneutic, leap. It is very hard to claim full objective truth when it comes to a life. One imagines one's way into the life. One makes it clear one is doing that. In the hopes that a fuller sense of the lived life will be communicated. Objective facts are verifiable, yet they will never give us a sense of the inner life. This is Thompson's approach, and I think it is highly successful. Let me point out a couple of things I liked.Thompson starts out by considering Christie's childhood home, Ashfield. The importance of Ashfield for Christie cannot be overstated. It defined the very sense of "home" for her and remained a source of wonderful memories throughout her life. Christie struggled to hold on to the house as long as possible, finally giving it up once it had been swallowed up by the suburban expansion of Torquay (and to help fund another dream home, Greenway.) When she heard it was going to be demolished, she desperately tried to save it. What Thompson recounts as part of this is her own journey to the site of Ashfield. All that remains to indicate the site is a blue plaque on a small rock not much bigger than it next to a bus stop in front of a sadly plain pseudo-modernist apartment building. It is a great allegory for the dilemma of the biographer. How to bring something back to life that was so important to your subject, when absolutely nothing tangible remains to suggest what it was like? It's a brilliant gesture on Thompson's part. And makes us aware of so much at the same time.Another thing that stood out for me was her discussion of Christie's first marriage. She totally changed how I saw Archie Christie. Everything I've read about him makes him seem like the most horrifying narcissist. Which of course makes one wonder how on earth's name Christie fell for him. But what Thompson makes clear is that that kind of narcissism, while it focuses on you, is incredibly sexy. It's the stuff of romance novels. Plus, Thompson shows how Archie's absolute certainty and insistence about so many things would be compelling to someone who naturally over-thought things. Christie admired decisiveness and action. So Thompson helped me to understand Christie's first marriage in a way I never did before. Something like that--which is so important to Christie's life story, psychology and fiction--is by itself justification to praise this biography.As with this mode of biography in general, there will be places where you will probably disagree with the imaginative work Thompson does. But I am sure every reader will at the same time come across so many things where you feel that Thompson has hit true pay dirt, that it will finally seem that this is simply part of the territory for an approach that truly tries to understand this notoriously private writer.

Thompson researches Agatha’s life with enthusiasm for the artist Christie became as well as her roots researching her childhood so we understand the journey of the girl growing up to be the author, business woman, playwright and icon. Christie had a life that Thompson illustrates amply with quotations from Agatha’s own writing - her mysteries - insightful and clever prose, Agatha’s keen awareness of human frailty is traced vividly in 1926 when she suffered a breakdown having faced facts about her first husband’s infidelity and the loss of her marriage soon after her beloved mother dies.It is the success of The Mousetrap that brings a crystal clear focus to her life in her second phase: a new marriage and second chance at travel adventures.Very well researched. I recommend it for novices and fans- it has a Downton Abbey undertone of the early years of her life- fascinating time to be a woman author.

The first half of this book drew heavily on Christie's autobiography, repeating stories almost word-for-word from that source without much new to add and as such it was hard to get through. However, the second half was thoroughly well-researched and I found it both enlightening and entertaining. The main drawback of this book is the author's tendency to preach at her audience. Throughout the book, she makes multiple digs at modern life and modern women that this modern woman living her modern life found distracting. She also tends to overreach herself when drawing conclusions. For example, her insistence that Agatha's weight in later life was a conscious choice, a sort of blubbery armor used by the author to protect her wounded soul is both not supported by any facts and seriously condescending. The woman liked to eat and spent much of her life sitting at a typewriter. Isn't that reason enough?

This a brilliant biography by a writer who was given extraordinary access to both Agatha Christie's family and business associates and many of her private papers. From those, she has been able to draw original insights into this very complicated and, in some ways, still mysterious woman.I found it so interesting that I went back and read it again when I turned the last page. This isn't a book to skim, although it is well and accessibly written. Of all the bios written about Christie (including her own), this is the one to have.

I enjoyed this book a great deal. She dealt well with the facts, and a side of Agatha Ctistie emerged that I hadn't considered. I realized the biographer couldn't know some things, but she was quick to point out that it was only comjecture, based on facts, and interviews.She points out that a couple of authors, have used what they state as facts, but the people they interviewed were not in any position to know about the things they stated. And they were then presented as facts in their works. Upon investigating I realized she was accurate.

The missing 11 days in a way I would never have thought of. Talks about AC's life and also AC putting her own ideas into her books through her characters. An interesting read. Also, of course, tells about her life and struggles.

Lots of detailed info, but long and drawn out. Reads like it might've been the author's master's thesis or doctoral dissertation. Also contained spoilers as to whodunnit - like who killed Roger Akroyd, for starters. After that, whenever I came to a section that started discussing specific details of specific novels, I skipped over it, as I have not read all of AC's books yet. So don't read it until you have finished reading whatever AC novels you are planning on reading!

I loved reading Agatha Christie mysteries and stories and often wondered what she was like. I started researching biographies and found that this book gives a much more in depth look at Ms. Christie and her times than most. Laura Thompson is obviously a fan, but doesn't pull any punches when it comes to Ms. Christie's very human faults and foibles. A fascinating read.

This biography of the crime writer, the best-selling novelist in the history of the world, is very well written and offers a pretty comprehensive account of her life, mindset and her works. Her life seems to divide into three phases (though the book doesn't quite present it in these terms): her early life and writing career up to 1926, the year of her famous 11 day "disappearance" at a crucial time in her life when her first marriage to Archie Christie was at breaking point; her flourishing into the "golden" age of her writing in the 1930s and 40s and a happier second marriage to Middle East archaeologist Max Mallowan; and from 1950 when she moved from being "merely" a highly successful and prolific writer to becoming a phenomenon of worldwide fame, though Laura Thompson considers her books were generally poorer in the last 25 years of her life. Her books exert a powerful effect on readers in countries and cultures across the world, despite the fact that nearly all of them are set against the kind of upper middle class background into which she was born in Torquay in 1890, probably because the lucidity of the situations and the careful construction of many of her plots can appeal universally. I found the post-war sections of the book rather dull in places, dominated by arguments over her tax liabilities and her moving between her various houses, plus the unsatisfactory nature of many of the plays and films based on her books, compared to the massive success of most of the latter. I thought Laura Thompson sometimes laboured some points too heavily and parts of the book were overwritten, though overall this was an absorbing account of a literary phenomenon whose influence and popularity continue to this day.

Laura Thompson writes excellent biographies and I recommend her other book, on the Lucan mystery, wholeheartedly. This is very good, too, as it is a portrait of an age and a time lost to us now. Growing up in the 60s and 70s, I had an image of Christie as a rather cosy old lady churning out cosy mysteries set in theme-park English villages. Thompson's book revealed a complex and interesting woman and several chapters are dedicated to the story of Christie's first marriage and her own mysterious "disappearance" in the 1920s, which brought Christie so much unfavourable publicity. Thompson is also good at setting Christie's books in their context, and in fact I stopped reading the biography about two-thirds of the way through to go back and re-read at least six of the novels themselves! Laura Thompson is a very polished and thorough writer, with a style easy to warm to, and I very much enjoyed this book.

The author offers a new perspective on Ms.Christie. There is a very good bibliography. It seems an objective text. However, there are some gaps, which due to a lot of time passing since the 1920's,are acceptable. Probably not all family secrets are revealed and that's fine.

A most useful addition to the bookshelf in understanding the effect of Edward FitzGerald's inspiring poem The Ruba'iya't of Omar Khayya'm on other writers.Charles MuglestonOmar Khayyam Theatre Company

If you are a student of literature this book will help you understand how the life and nature of an author forms the works.