Customer Reviews

Elephants Can Remember (Hercule Poirot)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Celia Ravenscroft is but a little girl when both her parents commit suicide. Never did she worry about the real reasons for that dramatic event, until today when she stands on the verge of getting married to Desmond Burton-Cox. Only one question suddenly seems of importance: Who killed whom, Celia's father or mother? Reason enough for Ariadne Oliver, Celia's godmother, to pay a visit to her old friend Hercule Poirot. The famous sleuth persuades Mrs. Oliver to delve -with his guidance, of course- into the past, to find the persons who are like elephants, the persons who will still remember the important details about this all-but-forgotten tragedy.

Elephants Can Remember is Agatha Christie's next to last work of detection and the author shows clearly signs of age, which is understandable since she was eighty-two years old and in failing health.

Elephants Can Remember is a "murder in retrospect" mystery. Although Christie has proven to fully master this format -see Sparkling Cyanide and Five Little Pigs- she now quickly looses touch with the story. She is forced to sow the narrative together with vague memories of a series of old spinsters and suddenly even events that should easily be remembered are covered by the veil of forgetfulness. No surprise that the plot is total confusion. It is less a mystery than a scrapbook of memories. Action is less important than atmosphere, which makes the story quite tedious and difficult to hang on to. Nevertheless, the experienced reader will figure out the solution to this not too mysterious mystery halfway through the book.

"Elephants Can Remember" does not read like a typical Hercule Poirot mystery. Agatha Christie's famed detective is drawn into an old case by his friend, the amateur sleuth and mystery writer Ariadne Oliver. The case involves what was apparently the double suicide of a loving husband and wife, and the concern that these past actions might have left a horrible impact upon their children.

The story switches between the findings of Ariadne Oliver and Hercule Poirot as they each go in search of 'elephants' who might remember what happened around the time of the accident, because after all, an elephant never forgets. While there is no definite evidence as to what happened, there are those who have never accepted the double suicide theory because they couldn't answer the question why. But with Poirot and Mrs. Oliver working together, a long-unspoken truth is certain to be uncovered.

"Elephants Can Remember" is classic Agatha Christie, in terms of mystery. It's central mystery has a unique, if perhaps a little predictable, twist, the denouement of which is quite evenly paced and satisfactory. However, this might be one novel where the time period of the plot is more glaring than others. The prose is heavy-handed at times and one does get a little sick of all the mentions of 'elephants'. The characters are borderline two-dimensional and, therefore, the reader does not care about them, even if they are still interested in the mystery at hand.

This must be the worst Agatha Christie book ever. It's her very last Hercule Poirot novel, and one can see that the writer is very old by now (82). There is no freshness left in her prose; it is stale, predictable, corny, and generally trashy. As other reviewers have said, the material contained here would barely be enough to sustain a short story. To make a full-length novel out of this really is ridiculous. The book fails at what normally is Agatha Christie's greatest strength: the plot and the denouement. With dozens of pages left to go, the reader *knows* the solution! Unheard of in the world of Christie; if for nothing else, then for this the novel cannot be rated higher than 1 star. However, the characters and dialogs are boring and cliche-ridden as well, so the book has no redeeming qualities either. Nothing ever happens on the 200 pages of this book; no crime, no mystery, no real conflict among characters; it's all just endlessly boring talk, talk, and nothing but talk about the past. The only interesting thing, perhaps, is to contemplate the autobiographical hints Christie gives us in describing one of the novel's detectives, Ariadne Oliver -- a mystery writer. But these hints are only interesting because they throw light on our favourite writer, Agatha Christie -- they are not interesting in themselves and therefore do not improve the book's literary quality. It was excruciating to have to wade through the turgid prose of this book; this title cannot be recommended to anyone except extreme Christie enthusiasts.

I am a huge fan of Agatha Christie, but this mystery was lacking. I figured out whodunnit about halfway through the novel, but thought to myself, "No...it can't be so-and-so! That would be too obvious." Well, guess what. It was. It was still a good read because I enjoy Ms. Christie's writing style and interactions between characters. If the mystery itself is not the only important part, then it's a worthwhile book.

Inspite of a good character analysis and settings, this book falls much much below the usual standard of A.C. The plot especially is a BIG let-down and the climax falls flat. That even A.C should resort to such predictable wool-over-the-eye is amazing. The structure is very little different from Five Little Pigs - if Elephants Can Remember then Pigs can recall much better!

It could have been solved in half the time. But it is not, and to appreciate or understand this novel, readers must place it in the proper context.

The problem was at first vague; Ariadne Oliver was asked by a stranger if the mother of Ariadne's goddaughter killed the father, or was it vice-versa. The deaths were actually some twenty years or more before. As the stranger was the mother to a man who was contemplating marriage to Ariadne's goddaughter, she could be partially forgiven for her apparent concern. Of course one of the things Ariadne did was to call on Hercule Poirot, and together they embarked on elephant-chase to pry for secrets from the past.

"Elephants can remember" was published in 1972, that is 52 years after the first Poirot novel "The Mysterious Affairs at Styles". Many people did not even live that long. Agatha Christie aged her characters along with the years, and therefore there were cases that were different from bodies being found all over the place.

Other similar novels before this whereby Christie's detectives investigate deaths long in the past included Dumb Witness, Five Little Pigs, Mrs McGinty's Dead, Ordeal By Innocence, and Nemesis. The common theme among them was that the investigator(s) had to depend on memories of various people who might not even be present; but from their recollections, clues were found to provide either the definitive picture of the culprits or the definitive picture of the crime. What a lot of impatient readers would find irritating was having to sift through the useful information from the useless. Elephants is such another tale.

Mystery veterans would probably have been able to jump to the solution before Poirot's grand finale, but would they have been able to unravel the threads in the manner necessary? Proofs have to be gathered, and evidence, motivation, etc were all the necessary persuasions for Elephants before they would give up their secrets.

The meat and drink of this novel is more than solving the mystery of who killed who, but to recapture the atmosphere, the mood, the aura of that time in the past, and to be able to put events in their proper perspectives. Also no less important was Poirot's being able to relate the past (in its correct perspective) and its impact on the present in order for persuade the elephants to give up their secrets.

This novel written in the twilight of Dame Agatha's long and illustrious career (1972) would have been better left on the cutting room floor. It was especially painful for me to read because I not long ago re-read her vibrant, lively and completely mystifying "Murder at the Vicarage" which was written in 1927. The comparison was depressing.

Hercule Poirot is teamed with Mrs. Oliver, a crime novelist, to find the truth of a 15-20 year old murder/suicide. Mrs. Oliver's goddaughter, Celia is the daughter of the couple who supposedly entered this pact. For the first one-half of the book, we are not advanced an inch in any direction. Many people are interviewed (the "elephants" of the title) and most have vague memories of the couple, as does Mrs. Oliver herself. Mrs. O's dithering is not artlessly charming, for we are as confused as she. Saddest cut of all, the red herrings are not "herrings" at all. They are giant signposts. Rather than Poirot gracefully unraveling the mystery on the last page, the reader has left him in the dust 50 pages ago. The prose has a distinctly purplish hue.

According to the publisher, "Elephants Can Remember" was originally published as "Five Little Pigs." I do not recommend this book, because it does not do Dame Agatha justice. There are 75 titles to choose that will far better reflect her abilities and why she earned the title "Queen of Crime."

I know Christie was pretty old when she wrote this book, so it pains me to be so negative, but her age really does show. The story isn't interesting, the mystery isn't mysterious and the characters are paper-thin -- even Poirot seems like a shadow of his usual self. The exception is Ariadne Oliver, who gets a remarkable amount of development for someone who ostensibly is just a side character. This is her final appearance in a Poirot mystery, and she gets an excellent send-off. The same cannot be said for Poirot. This is the final Poirot novel that Christie wrote, though not the final one that was published, since she wrote his real finale years earlier and set it aside to be published after her death. I haven't read it yet because I cannot bear to, so I'm saving it to be the last new Christie book I ever read. I just hope it's superior to this one!

In this one, Poirot and Mrs. Oliver are trying to figure out what happened to the parents of one of Mrs. Oliver's god children. They were found shot to death in the woods, but what happened? Did the father shoot the mother or vice versa? Was it a suicide pact? Mrs. Oliver is asked to investigate by a woman she meets at a luncheon, then proceeds to go about interviewing a lot of people she hasn't seen in many years, to ask questions about what was happening in the family, to try and put the pieces together with Poirot, who is busy talking to the police. It's quite similar to Five Little Pigs (Also published as Murder In Retrospect), another Poirot murder in retrospect. The difference is that you'll be able to spot the solution to this one miles off, as I was. I can now say that about only three of her books (Peril at End House: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Agatha Christie Collection) and The Mirror Crack'd (Miss Marple Mysteries) being the other two) and sadly, it doesn't make for a very interesting read. More annoying still is that in this book, a character writes to Poirot and tells him that in order to solve the mystery, he should find and interview person X, because she might be able to help them with the truth. And so after pages and pages of wasted time, Poirot finds and interviews X, and she KNOWS THE ENTIRE EXPLANATION TO THE MYSTERY. She is flown to England, she tells her story and then the mystery is solved. So tell me again why Poirot and Mrs. Oliver were even needed?! That guy could've talked to this character himself anytime he liked! Christie also employs a method I've seen her resort to in just one other book -- she has Poirot, the master detective . . . hire a detective! In lieu of actually writing plot development, she settles for pages of exposition as a man shows up and tells Poirot all the details he needs to know about a specific character. And she later turns out to have no bearing on the mystery whatsoever, so the entire interlude was a colossal waste of time. Normally I'd decry this as a lazy author's way to get out of writing an additional chapter of action, but in Christie's case I'm charitable enough to substitute the word "lazy" with the word "elderly," which makes the choice understandable if not forgivable.

On the whole, I have to admit that I wouldn't even recommend this book to a die-hard Christie fan. But if you're dead set and determined to read everything she ever wrote, then go for it. I am too, so I can sympathize. Just be prepared to be bored and let down big time by this one. It's just not up to Christie's usual standards. Luckily, she wrote enough phenomenal, classic stories to be sure that her legacy would remain in tact regardless of what she published, and all Christie newbies can rest assured: it gets a heck of a lot better than this.

Whose work are we actually reading at this point? There were major differences in punctuation, word choices, and scene breaks between the original Collins and Dodd Mead editions of this novel. There were further differences between the Dodd Mead editions republished by Random House/Avenel and the Dodd Mead editions republished by Simon & Shuster/Pocket. There are further additions still in the recent Signet, Berkley, and Leventhal and Black editions. For every publishing house putting out her works, there seem to be a new batch of editors altering Agatha Christie's words and the sound of her voice. Here the publishers at Collins, dissatisfied with their own earlier efforts, put still more distance between author and public with a "New Ed" edition. What's the matter with these publishers? Whose voice do they think we want to hear when we sit down to a novel by Agatha Christie? And what will she sound like twenty years from now? It's frightening that her estate has failed to see the importance of guarding her words as she wrote them. Please tell me I'm not the only one here who senses that a crime has been committed.

I am fan of Christie's work but this one is a huge disappointment. The story could have been told in 4 pages. There is no continuity to the plot, no idea why a dozen "elephants" had to be interviewed, and no clue how Poirot uncovered the "mystery". This is one mystery novel where I would recommend you read the last 5 pages and be spared the boredom of repetitive conversations.