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It is nearly ten years since The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie,
Charles Osborne’s biographical companion to the works of Agatha Christie
was published, which discussed, chronologically, all her crime books.
Although he limits himself only to the novels, not the short story
collections, James Zemboy’s READER’S GUIDE is easily three if not four
times the size of Osborne’s. A hardback, quarto volume of 442 pages,
each in double columns, the book is divided into four parts – first, an
Introduction, broken down into a number of subjects – short accounts of
her life, her writing career, the country as it was then socially, and
the geography, transport and local government of England as it was. Then
follows the largest section: discussions of the novels, using their
American titles and US dates of publication. Penultimately, comes an
explanation of British terms, and finally two indexes. This is an
American work written for Americans and it shows in a number of places.
The discussion of each title is divided into five sections: “Setting”
giving the location and the dates, together with any specific
background; “Story”, an outline of the initial events of the novel,
which tends to break off early to avoid spoilers; “Characters” lists all
characters both appearing and mentioned in the order of their
appearance, some characters receiving just a sentence, others several
paragraphs; “French into English” translates Poirot’s and others’
remarks in the Gallic tongue; and finally, “Comments” remarks on the
quality of the mystery, the development of Christie’s technique,
reflections on social history and anything else relevant. In this way,
the treatment of Death in the Air (i.e. Death in the Clouds) occupies
seven pages – considerable detail. At the end of each decade Zemboy
summarizes the development of Christie’s oeuvre, while irregularly he
will also summarize Christie’s attitudes to some more abstruse matters:
journalists, psychology, mother and daughter relationships, and lazy
gardeners are some of the subjects discussed in detail as Zemboy reveals
the themes implicit in their re-occurrence. There is, luckily, a subject
index so that one can return to Zemboy’s discussions and can cross refer
to the books in which these subjects are raised.
Zemboy points out how Christie reflects the changing social life of
Britain. He comments on the relative income of the characters, their
ownership of motor cars, the size of their houses, and the staffing
required for a middle class life. He comments adversely on what he takes
to be Christie’s attitude to work, which might be summarised as it being
better not to work than to work when one has money, and he also takes
her to task for what he regards as her attitude to the servant problem,
without making it clear whether he is commenting on the opinions of
Christie’s characters or those in her editorial voice. Given that
Christie wrote predominantly in dialogue it can be difficult to separate
the two, but should be done. Zemboy gives a great deal more detail to
discussing the geography of Christie’s fictional world than did Osborne,
and tends to point out her inconsistencies, which Osborne did not. Miss
Marple’s St Mary Mead, for instance, seems to have been located in
several real counties and even more fictional ones. However, Zemboy’s
own knowledge of British geography is dubious: “a portion of Yorkshire
and several neighbouring counties make up a region known as ‘The
Midlands’ … Manchester, Mansfield, Sheffield, Nottingham and Doncaster
are only a few of these …” and completing that paragraph in his
discussion of A Holiday for Murder (i.e. Hercule Poirot's Christmas) he
adds “’The Black Country’ was a term that was associated with the ‘The
Industrial Midlands’”, as if he hardly realises that the Pennines and
the Derbyshire Dales separate Mansfield from ‘The Black Country’, and
that few of his towns and cities are in contiguous regions of industrial
hell.
Zemboy is acute enough to realise many of Christie’s strengths and
weaknesses, and acute enough, as well, to point out many of her less
well-known interests. She was, for instance, a strong, if inexplicit,
proponent of modern architecture: not only Poirot’s favoured residence
in Whitehaven Mansions was Art Deco, any new building finding her
favour, directly or indirectly described by her, would have been Art
Deco. New properties built in stockbroker Tudor (Osbert Lancaster’s
phrase, which I think Zemboy does not use) probably house residents just
as false in their character as the style of their construction. That
would, though, simply add those individuals to the list of suspects – it
would not make them guilty.
Zemboy has one or two lapses. He repeats points, perhaps because he
thinks the book will be dipped into, not read continuously; and he has
not compared the US and British editions, though he is aware that some
of the US editions have always been cut, leading to inconsistencies. He
was, however, ahead of the world in other ways, deprecating the rapid
deterioration of Christie’s final years, for instance; something that
has been commented on since, in the spring of 2009, by scientists
reading those same books for evidence of Christie’s decline due to
Alzheimer’s.
Would an American reader of this review understand the reference if I
described this READER’S GUIDE as a curate’s egg? I don’t know. However,
much of it is excellent. |
