Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life by Laura Thompson (Book review)

Laura Thompson's hefty and very well-researched biography of Agatha Christie focuses largely on a psychological study of Agatha and her relationships - rather like Poirot, she is clearly interested in "the psychology of the individual". She also mounts a vigorous defence of Christie's work against those who have sought to diminish and misrepresent it (while acknowledging that it does, at times, vary in quality).

Thompson has had access to a lot of material and her book draws heavily not only on Agatha's letters, notebooks, etc but also on interviews with key people such as Agatha's daughter, Rosalind (since deceased) - as well as numerous extracts from the books themselves, most notably the strongly autobiographical Mary Westmacott novel, Unfinished Portrait. (Beware spoilers - numerous details of various plots are revealed.) She devotes a lot of time to the famous 1926 disappearance and presents an account which, while clearly fictionalised, seems plausible and accords with the facts as they are known. I've never bought into the absurd "amnesia" idea which the family firmly stuck to - far more likely that Agatha, certainly in a state of great distress about husband Archie's request for a divorce, simply took off on her own for a while, perhaps at least partly in the hope of bringing him to his senses. When she was found exactly where she had said she would be - at a Yorkshire spa - albeit under a false name (a possibility which had apparently occurred to no-one), she was deemed to have played the public for a fool and opprobrium was unleashed. (Imagine how she would have fared in these days of social media!) I agree with Laura Thompson as to the particular disapproval heaped upon women who have apparently transgressed.

Agatha's snobberies and prejudices, as they appear in her work and her life, are characterised with some justice as both products of her time and as more complex and nuanced than is often supposed, although the author lost me somewhat with a comparison to the present day "mistreatment" of Brexiteers! I also felt she harped rather too much on Agatha's weight gain and supposed loss of youthful attractiveness, with snide asides such as "...[she was] a woman of substance.... a little too much substance, by then". Archie's unfaithfulness is deemed a consequence of this.

While I didn't necessarily agree with Laura Thompson's position on everything, it's undoubtedly an interesting and insightful read and I learned a lot I hadn't known about Agatha's life (indeed I realised I really hadn't known that much).

I'm inspired, anyway to reread all the Christies in publication order (while I'm sure I've read them all at some point, it's been at least thirty years ago in some cases). I've even downloaded an app to keep track. So watch this space.