A review by we_are_all_mad_here26
Agatha Christie: An Autobiography by Agatha Christie

4.0

Having enjoyed so much of ACs fiction, I greatly enjoyed (for the most part) getting to see where it came from. This was a woman who found much pleasure in life, even as she aged and things like long walks and swimming in the sea became impossible.

Things I loved:

--The mentions of her writing, though I do wish there'd been a little more writing and a little less archaeology;

--Her acceptance of her own shyness and inarticulateness: in one case she even allowed herself to be turned away from the door of an event held in her honor;

--The fact that as a fairly young and recently divorced woman, she traveled solo to the Middle East in a time when I can't imagine many young women traveled solo anywhere;

--The revelation that even the highest-selling author ever (aside from the Bible and Shakespeare) did not for many years consider herself a "real writer."

--Quotes like this:

“We are all the same people as we were at three, six, ten or twenty years old. More noticeably so, perhaps, at six or seven, because we were not pretending so much then, whereas at twenty we put on a show of being someone else, of being in the mode of the moment. If there is an intellectual fashion, you become an intellectual; if girls are fluffy and frivolous, you are fluffy and frivolous. As life goes on, however, it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself every day. This is sometimes disconcerting for those around you, but a great relief to the person concerned.”

Not a book that anyone will tear through, and I suspect more enjoyable for fans than for casual readers. I'm glad I picked it up.