Posted by Julie at Oct 17, 2012 8:00 am
My daughter has been assigned that book for English class. After Animal Farm, this is a breath of fresh air! I’ve actually never read an Agatha Christie novel, though she was super popular with my students back in the day.
On Sunday, I took her and my mother to see a local production of the stage play. It was FANTASTIC. Only one set and they used so effectively. The acting was spot-on, the costuming perfect, the special effects and music INCREDIBLY creepy and the storyline, from the screenplay adapted by Agatha Christie herself, was engaging and clever.
So now I’m reading the book. I try to read the books my daughter has to read so that we can discuss them. It’s very close to the stage production (which has a different ending than the book) but Dame Christie does one thing that is driving me, the modern reader, a little batty: head-hopping!
Head-hopping is when an author changes point of view…OFTEN. If they change once or twice a scene, that’s not necessarily head-hopping. One or twice a PARAGRAPH? Hoppity, hoppity, hoppity!
I know what she’s trying to do. She’s trying to establish that all the narrators are unreliable, since one of the ten people who have gone to Soldier Island is a sociopathic serial killer and she doesn’t want to give away who that is. It was probably a “novel” novel structure at the time, but it would never fly in today’s mysteries. The reader literally cannot figure out who the killer is until she reveals it in the epilogue because for the whole of the book, she’s lying to you.
I don’t mind the occasional unreliable narrator, but since I know that’s what she’s doing ahead of my reading, I’m ferreting out indications or clues that might have pointed readers to the killer. So far, there are a few. Nothing glaring. However, if you’ve watched as many episodes of Criminal Minds as I have, it’s pretty obvious who the killer is based entirely on victimology. :-)
Nevertheless, I’m enjoying the book quite a bit. It’s compelling, even though I know exactly what’s going to happen.
So have you read Dame Agatha Christie? And if you haven’t, any other mystery authors who grab you?
:flowers4you: I love Agatha Christie. I used to what shows with Henri Poirot when I was a kid. She fascinated me. My fave was Murder on the Orient Express. Growing up in Jamaica I was fascinated with the idea of traveling on trains AND the fact that the author of the book was female. Love! Gotta run…be back later.
Peace and love,
Paula R.
I’ve read a few of Christie’s books in the past. I enjoyed the ones I read. Love all the old movies made from her books. Evil Under the Sun is one of my favorites to this day.
I love you are reading books along with your daughter. I’ve done that with my nieces before. I read faster than my sister so she has always had me read along in case girls needed to talk about books outside of school.
I love Criminal Minds!
I have never read Agatha Christie. As a child, my grandmother and Mom bought me a ton of Nancy Drew books and the Clue mystery books. As I grew older, Mom would pass on her Mary Higgins Clark books. Then I read every book written by Thomas Harris and Dan Brown. I love mysteries and books that have mysteries tied into the plot. There is something exciting to figuring out the clues and discovering “Who-Done-It!”
I love Agatha Christie. And Then There Were None (aka Ten Little Indians) is a good one. I like Murder on the Orient Express (aka Murder on the Calais Coach) better, though. =o)
I loved the new series out by Debra Webb Faces of Evil.
Huge fan of the books and the many BBC movies… there’s also an Agatha Christie web page… I think it’s a great idea to read what your daughter has as required…. an insight [both ways] to thinking processes..
I have not read Agatha Christie.
On a different subject….did you see “Once Upon a Time”? Oh my, it’s getting great! I love how they are integrating the past and the two worlds. The writing is so tight and then, they have just the right amount each scene.
That was the first Christie book I read and I adore her!! I love how you can read a whole book, get to the ending and find whodidit and go back and see the clues. You have to let us know if you figured it out when you’re done!!
The only one I’ve read. I’d And Then There Were None. We had to read it for high school too. I liked it but not enough to read anything else by her.
I’ve read some of her books, and like Liza and Paula, have seen a lot of the movies. But I haven’t read any of her writing for years.
As for the head-hopping… until I started writing, I never realized that was a no-no, so I never picked up on it in books. After I started learning the craft, and realized what a serious no-she-didn’t thing it was, then it became a problem for me. Now, if I start a book where the author is hopping around, I have to put it down.
I read them years ago and it wouldn’t hurt me to read them again.
If I remember correctly I read Murder on the Orient Express a very long time ago. I enjoyed it. Now, I just prefer more contempory books. I read Mary Higgins Clark sometimes, Karen Rose. Karen maybe more romantic suspense but they are very good.
I love Agatha Christie!! Especially her Miss Marple. Other mystery authors I love to read are Dorothy Sayers & her Lord Peter Whimsy as well as Sue Grafton & Carolyn Hart. There are are authors who write darker mysteries like Faye Kellerman & Patricia Cornwall. Or light mystery writers like Janet Evanovich, Joanna Fluke or Earlene Fowler’s Benni Harper series. I alternate between mysteries & romance not sure which I prefer. There are many other mystery authors I enjoy, too many to name here. Just like there are so many romance authors I enjoy. As with most things, what appeals to one person may or may not appeal to others.
I am pretty much stuck in the romance genre and i like it there. I read a few mysteries when I was younger but I wasn’t much of a reader. I just had too many things going on to settle into reading.
My son was a slow reader and would struggle to get to get a book read in time for school assignments. I would have him read to me and then I would read some of the book to him so we could get through the book faster and he wouldn’t get discouraged. I remember reading To Kill A Mockingbird with him. Not only did it give us some mom/son time together, I found I was really enjoying the book and wound up finishing it on my own.
I started my adult reading in high school with all of the usual books like your daughter but got hooked all things Agatha Christie and mysteries in general. But I also read all thing romance too, Barbara Cartland to start.
I read my Grandma’s copy of And Then There Were None, but that was so long ago I think back then they called it Ten Little Indians. I was about 11 years old and thought it was an amazing book!
I love Agatha Christie and her books were the first ones I could check out from the adult section of the library when I was about 12. By then I had read anything I wanted to in the kids section. I remember reading And Then there were None in about the 9th grade and it’s still one of my favorite books.