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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
4.25*
Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to Sweet Delight
Some are Born to Sweet Delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
- William Blake, from 'Auguries of Innocence’
Agatha Christie went a little different here, not using one of her famous and beloved ‘detectives’. The result ends up being rather darker, a psychological study of a murderer. It all starts rather slowly, but a feeling of unease can be felt, growing steadily, surreptitiously, until the full horror is displayed to the reader. The use of Blake’s poetry works very well. I personally prefer the beginning of that poem but I can see how these lines added to the atmosphere of the novel, beautiful and threatening at the same time.
Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to Sweet Delight
Some are Born to Sweet Delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
- William Blake, from 'Auguries of Innocence’
Agatha Christie went a little different here, not using one of her famous and beloved ‘detectives’. The result ends up being rather darker, a psychological study of a murderer. It all starts rather slowly, but a feeling of unease can be felt, growing steadily, surreptitiously, until the full horror is displayed to the reader. The use of Blake’s poetry works very well. I personally prefer the beginning of that poem but I can see how these lines added to the atmosphere of the novel, beautiful and threatening at the same time.
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
So that… was not what I expected at all. Peculiar, just peculiar...
I may update once I have digested it.
I may update once I have digested it.
The writing felt slightly forced regarding the story’s resolution, and the narrator’s unreliability was unconvincing. Why would he tell the story this way? It didn’t make much sense. That being said, the book had potential, and the characters were fairly interesting. You’ll likely enjoy it more if you don’t expect a classic whodunnit but rather a psychological thriller (with a Hitchcockian feel?).
While I will give Christie credit for writing something a bit different than her usual fare (kind of), there was a lot to put this low down on my list of Christie reads:
- I guessed most of what was coming in the book. That's partly just from having read a lot of Christie, but also it felt somewhat inevitable because otherwise the majority of the book is a fairly boring story where a dude tells you all of his thoughts about life and then a story about meeting a woman and getting married and building a house. I think it's supposed to have the tension and claustrophobia of a gothic novel, but aside from a handful of warnings lobbed at the couple about getting off the land they're on, there really wasn't a lot to give it that feeling, at least for me.
- The book makes heavy use of the "g***y" slur for the Romani people (including both a character labeled as such and the land and the house itself having that name) and has multiple characters spouting stereotypes about them being thieves, untrustworthy, vagrants, etc. I get that there wasn't a lot of awareness in 1967 (or even today) about this being an offensive word and stereotype, but it still makes it cringeworthy to read.
- I appreciated the background that I got from the All About Agatha episode on this book that Christie was pressured by her publishers to take this psychological thriller and make it more of a whodunnit, because that explains the way that clues and suspects were awkwardly shoehorned in. For example, why in the worldwould Claudia Hardcastle pick up a random allergy capsule from the floor of the folly and take it herself, and also why was she hanging out in the folly so much to begin with ? So I don't blame Christie for the mess this creates of the book in the last third or so, but that is the book we ultimately ended up with.
- I thought thatthe ending kind of ruined the rest of the book for me by making Mike into a psychopath. It was one thing when there were two greedy people who schemed out a complicated plot to get rich quick, and I could even see how that would turn into their downfall when it turned out they had different ideas about what kind of life they wanted to lead in the aftermath. But then it turned out that Mike wasn't just greedy and wasn't just devoid of empathy but actually took pleasure in killing, which felt like a step too far in his characterization.
I will politely disagree with the All About Agatha folks who put this in their top 5. This was not one I'd recommend or like to revisit.
- I guessed most of what was coming in the book. That's partly just from having read a lot of Christie, but also it felt somewhat inevitable because otherwise the majority of the book is a fairly boring story where a dude tells you all of his thoughts about life and then a story about meeting a woman and getting married and building a house. I think it's supposed to have the tension and claustrophobia of a gothic novel, but aside from a handful of warnings lobbed at the couple about getting off the land they're on, there really wasn't a lot to give it that feeling, at least for me.
- The book makes heavy use of the "g***y" slur for the Romani people (including both a character labeled as such and the land and the house itself having that name) and has multiple characters spouting stereotypes about them being thieves, untrustworthy, vagrants, etc. I get that there wasn't a lot of awareness in 1967 (or even today) about this being an offensive word and stereotype, but it still makes it cringeworthy to read.
- I appreciated the background that I got from the All About Agatha episode on this book that Christie was pressured by her publishers to take this psychological thriller and make it more of a whodunnit, because that explains the way that clues and suspects were awkwardly shoehorned in. For example, why in the world
- I thought that
I will politely disagree with the All About Agatha folks who put this in their top 5. This was not one I'd recommend or like to revisit.
In this one there's a character named Greta and she is referred to as "a hateful glorious golden-haired bitch"!