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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Revealing the mystery writer's mystery., November 27, 2003
This review is from: Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days (Hardcover)
Fame and wide acclaim came to Agatha Christie in 1926 when "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" was published. In the same year, however, her disappearance and the eleven-day search for her attracted even more attention. Subsequently in interviews and in her own autobiography, Agatha Christie refused to explain or refer to the incident. It was inferred that the breakdown of her first marriage had been one aspect of the mystery, and her reluctance to refer to anything so painful was respected. Since her death, she has been the subject of several biographies. None that I have read, even that of her second husband, Sir Max Mellowan, provides a satisfactory motivation or time table for the eleven missing days in 1926. It seems remarkable that a young writer from the smallest state in Australia should be the one to adequately research the subject and to have access to the best informants. Jared Cade knows Agatha Christie's novels, plays, poetry and short sories well, and demonstrates how insights into this major crisis in Agatha Christie's life reside in them. His theories are sound, his rebuttal of false and misleading explanations is strong, and his judgments - even of Dame Agatha herself - are balanced. Interest in what happened to the world' best-selling author back in 1926 may no longer be strong, but it is good to read something that at last sets the record straight. It is, moreover, a fascinating and focussed biography of someone who tried to keep herself away from public scrutiny. I like the compliment paid to the author by his principal informants, descendants of Agatha Christie's best friend: "This is the only biography that tells Agatha's life as it really was. Your insight into her life and personality is unsurpassed."
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Glimpse into a Human Life, September 10, 2010
This is a good and interesting read. Its basic thesis is that Agatha Christie plotted her mysterious disappearance in December 1926 to spite her then husband for his adultery. What she was unable to predict and to control, as she could with characters she created, was how others would respond, particularly her husband and the ravenous English press--and, Cade suggests, that explosion scarred a very private person to the end of her days. The book is very well researched, drawing on the knowledge and inferences of Christie's relatives, Judith and Graham Gardner. The latter point is important, because in the aftermath of her reemergence her family circled the wagons and kept her secrets alongside her. (As Christiephiles know, this most famous event in her life is not discussed in her memoirs.) Cade writes well and clearly and, to my mind, does an excellent job of tracing his subject's oblique references to the event in her novels, particularly those published under the name of Mary Westmacott. It is a sympathetic and persuasive reconstruction.
My quibble with the book, which often shades into quarrel, is that the author tends to write as though he has entered Miss Christie's mind, even as a child, and can articulate for her what she herself refused to confirm, or even to address. No matter how sympathetic an author tries to be, such an endeavor is simply impossible. Even if Agatha Christie herself had done so, human beings reflect on significant events of their lives in different ways at different ages. Cade reconstructs and recounts his subject's life the way that a mystery novelist does, such that Cade casts himself as Poirot or the "omniscient narrator," in effect if not exactly by intent.
Nevertheless, this is an interesting and informative biography, because Cade uses "the eleven missing days" as a window onto the whole of his subject's life and the peculiarities of Edwardian England. I left it appreciative of the imperfections, fragility, and toughness, not only of Agatha Christie, but of the people around her. Human beings are complicated creatures; few are outright heroes or villains. Miss Christie's finest mystery turns out to have been not one she wrote but one she lived. Such is true of us all, whatever our professions.
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Revealed at Last, December 28, 2001
I loved this book and have given several copies to people with great results. It's not only an investigation into the "eleven missing days," it takes great pains to tell the entire story of Agatha Christie's whole life. The way Cade was able to match Christie's work with her various traumas is wonderful, and it's hard to believe that seventy years later anyone can come up with something new about such a famous unsolved mystery, and yet Cade has done exactly that, with the help of Nan Watts' daughter. I wonder what Rosalind Hicks, Agatha Christie's daughter, thinks of this book? It's marvelous. We'll never be able to read, for example, "Verdict" in the same way, knowing it reflects on Max Mallowan, Christie's second husband, and his liaison with his executive assistant Barbara Parker, who became the second Lady Mallowan after Christie's death. How she was able to keep a sense of humor I'll never know. Surprisingly the book makes one feel more, not less, admiration for Christie. Good on you, Jared Cade! Can't wait to see where you turn your hand to next.
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