Book of the month
LukeMcLAren
Greece
in All stories
What do you think about After the Funeral?
Comments
We just don't know, too, what that fail-safe of literature, and especially AC literature, the Victorian patriarch was actually like, and what was the mustiness and constraint of living in his shadow like, waiting for his money. I can't imagine the feelings which would have been well-known to people familiar to AC, and so this novel does not resonate with me as well as the romances do.
The difference in Body in the Library is that there are more suspicious characters outside of the family who are involved, and so family relationships are not the only considerations. Another reason all of those factors aren't developed further, apart from the size of the book, is that we need to be left wondering about these things so that we can try to solve the mystery. Never mind that in Agatha Christie it's always the least likely character and usually the spouse if applicable, but still we are to be manufacturing all sorts of scenarios trying to figure it out.
She seems to be going through the motions putting flesh on the characters in After the Funeral, and pushing them through their movements like dolls at a tea party. The actor pair are quite abysmal and unbelievable to me. The novel has the feeling of a chore - getting through the story, and this is similar with Sad Cypress, I think. As you say the compulsion of the murderer is the pivot on which the novel turns. It is that tea shop, isn't it? You can imagine AC sitting in one, seeing the bird-like owner, and then, on another afternoon, passing outside the window in the rain, when not enough customers were going in, seeing the empty chairs, the look on the face of the owner in her smart apron - and, in one go, conceiving the whole story. Seeing in her mind that character's antithesis in the extravgant art collector, since all art is frivolous and surplus to requirements, whilst tea and cake can make the day go well. AC just needed padding for her theme to make a story. As types, the characters are observed correctly, I feel: it is the execution which falls down. I'm sure there are women like Susan all of us know today, many of them attracting men who don't love them.
I like the novel Evil Under the Sun for characters. The character and type - Kenneth Marshall - reminds me of a certain actor in the news at the moment, who strikes me as being chivalrous to a fault, and willing or indeed motivated by chivalry and breeding to charge to the rescue of a maligned female who is enduring what he sees as unfair press. We must not say, of course, who we mean, because it would seem rude, but I am sure you may guess of whom I am thinking - as I think you guessed another character I had mentioned, the last time.
Yes, the tea shop is the linch pin that holds the whole motive together and also the minor theme of the book that you have pointed out so well -- the juxtaposition of frivolity and gravity of reality. I have been acquainted with a woman who was so helpless yet affected to be artistic as a mask. In Gilchrist's case, to be subservient to such a person and at the mercy of her mindless whims would be a heavy burden to carry. She finds herself acting as an enabler to this ridiculous fraud, and the secure practicality of a tea shop is a magnet for her, overpowering any better judgement or morality she might have had.
Death on the Nile seems to be a longer book. There was a thread earlier about the average number of pages in an Agatha Christie novel with differing opinions about Death on the Nile. My copies of the book all contain more pages than other Christie titles, and I have always thought of Death on the Nile as longer. It is my favorite, as I said, although I admit the flaws. The nail polish is a mistake. In my opinion, it would have been better to forget that and think of some other (or no other) clue in its place. The solution to Death on the Nile is barely credible, but the nail polish makes no sense. It's a manufactured clue for the reader and a flaw, rendering the solution even more unbelievable. Yet the writing is otherwise so perfect in its character development and structure. It is the most perfectly structured novel in all of Christie's work. What don't we know at the end? Not much. She ties up nearly everything. She's exquisite in her execution, including the flaws, which I am fair enough to mention along side of my admiration for the novel.
Yes, she is Poirot here, and I feel that it's down to her personal experiences in being cheated on by her husband. I wonder if that is what she is commenting on in so many of her books. Regarding your question about Jackie, do you mean how she conceived of the idea for the character or what her opinion might have been?
And yes, I guessed whom you were alluding to in a previous post, as I am sure I know which man you are hinting at now. I have thoughts to share about Evil Under the Sun, but to avoid the thread becoming to unwieldy, I will save them for a more relevant post to that book. Let's hope it's the book of the month soon!
In John Curran's "Agatha Christie's Notebooks", Curran brings up the point that Cora Lansquenet's death in After The Funeral is "one of Christie's most brutal and bloody murders" and he elaborates that "the reason for the savagery of the killing in After The Funeral is not justified by the plot and it is difficult to understand why this method was adopted by the killer, or indeed, by Christie [....] stabbing or any other blunt instrument would have met the killer's requirement."
Curran mentions how the deaths of Miss Sainsbury Seale in One, Two, Buckle My Shoe and Simeon Lee in Hercule Poirot's Christmas seem to fit the motive of the crimes. Why was Cora's death handled the way it was in such a violent and horrific fashion by Agatha Christie? Why did Miss Gilchrist use a hatchet by all means and not any other weapon or poison? Was the use of a hatchet a demonstration of a deep seething hatred Miss Gilchrist had for her employer? Did they both have their scuffles? Was Cora bossy, fussy, or rude?
What do you make of Curran's observation?
We the readers don't spot this at the time - we should do, these are not the observations of one who has chosen to live amongst stronger passions and intense colours, flowing wine, strong sunshine which makes you doze and forget the detail of sustenance.
I still can't remember what that term is for when a third person narrative uses element of the first person in the choice of grammatical features used for the telling of a section about a particular person, and slipping into their words.
By the way GCKFan and Tuppence, there are two current threads about the same book, so it might be a good idea to amalgamate them.
I believe the term is free indirect discourse. It is a fancy way of describing situations in a book when the thoughts/feelings of an individual character is melded with the narrator's voice so one cannot tell whose opinion is actually being expressed.
One example of free indirect discourse is the description of Lady Russell's opinions of Anne Elliot's engagement to Captain Wentworth in Jane Austen's Persuasion. Here the narrator's and Lady Russell's individual voices blur together: "Anne Elliot, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence! It must not be, if by any fair interference of friendship, any representations from one who had almost a mother's love and mother's rights, it could be prevented."