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Agatha Christie: An English Mystery
 
 
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Agatha Christie: An English Mystery (Paperback)

by Laura Thompson (Author)
3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
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Agatha Christie: An English Mystery + Autobiography + Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days
Price For All Three: £23.93

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Product details

  • Paperback: 534 pages
  • Publisher: Headline Review (10 Jul 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0755314883
  • ISBN-13: 978-0755314881
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 106,154 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

A N Wilson, The Daily Mail, August 2007
'this new book by Laura Thompson is a triumphant success. She has true sympathy for her subject, she loves the books and she has managed in some intuitive way to make a completely convincing portrait of Agatha Christie the inner woman'
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

A triumphant success

(A. N. Wilson, Daily Mail )

Highly accomplished

(Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday )

‘Thompson does a fabulous job of getting inside her head’

(Rachel Cooke, Observer )

‘A superlative and rapturously written biography’

(Roger Lewis, Daily Express )

‘The most definitive biography so far’

(Andrea Mullaney, Scotland on Sunday )

‘The last word on Agatha Christie... superb’

(Charles Osborne, Literary Review )

'An excellent biography'

(Jake Kerridge, Telegraph Review )

'Outstanding'

(Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth )

‘Laura Thompson brings Christie's life, thoughts and creative identity to life in fascinating and painstaking detail.’

(Sophie Hannah, The Week )

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Agatha Christie: An English Mystery
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Customer Reviews

18 Reviews
5 star:
 (5)
4 star:
 (6)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (5)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.3 out of 5 stars (18 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars stunningly insightful, 22 Oct 2007
By jo bell (london N1) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Agatha Christie: The Biography of Agatha Christie (Hardcover)
what a joy to read a biography that gets inside the head of its subject, and makes the reader feel what THEY felt! I really understood Agatha Christie reading this book. It went behind her image and gave us a three-dimensional human being, a woman who was complex and vulnerable and not always very nice. Some biographies are just facts and figures. This one is like a novel in its insight. I found it gripping and moving and I can't stop thinking about Agatha now ...
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22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Alpha Plus, 7 Sep 2007
By Sarah Longford (Paris, France) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Agatha Christie: The Biography of Agatha Christie (Hardcover)
Exceptionally well written and better than the Janet Morgan biography. I found the analysis of the books excellent --with the possible exception of what Miss Thompsons writes about Nemesis and Passenger to Frankfurt. Miss Thompson considers them both good, which they are not -- like some of Christie's later books they are rambling and poorly structured. (They are certainly revealing about Christie's opinions.) The insights into the Mallowans' marriage on the other hand are absolutely fascinating. It was aslo extremely gratifying to read Miss Thompson's criticism of practically all recent TV adaptation -- all of them appalling.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting life, 22 Oct 2007
By L O'connor (richmond, surrey United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Agatha Christie: The Biography of Agatha Christie (Hardcover)
This is a long and interesting biography of Agatha Christie, which discusses her life in some detail. having read Agatha Christie's won fascinating autobiography many times, I found in this book much interesting supplementary information. Things that are not discussed in the autobiography are gone over here in more detail.

Of course, there is a lengthy chapter about the famous episode when she disappeared just after her husband told her he wanted a divorce. There is much specualtion about Agatha Christie's state of mind, her reasons for doing it etc, but these can only remain speculation, since Mrs Christie never discussed the subject herself.

One theme that persists through the book is Agatha Christie's unattractiveness. She had, so Laura Thompson gives us to understand, become so unattractive that it was hardly surprising that Archie Christie should have looked elsewhere. One feels that the author believes that Mrs Christie would have done better to divert some of her energies from writing into keeping herself lovely, perhaps having face-lifts or something. Naturally, Ms Thomspon cannot bring herself to believe that Max Mallowan could possibly have found Agatha Christie attractive, there must have been other reasons why he wanted to marry her. The age difference between them is harped on constantly as if it was forty years instead of fourteen, and Agatha Christie's lack of attractiveness is mentioned so frequently that you cannot help wondering why Laura Thompson is so peculiarly obsessed with this subject, and why she considers Mrs Christie to have been so repulsive.

She is generally quite interesting when discussing the books, and one of the parts I enjoyed most was her favourable comparison of Mrs Christie with the other well-known detective writers of her era. She is staunch in her defense of Agatha Christie as a fine writer.

She has a slightly trying habit of quoting from Agatha Christie's 'Mary Westmacott' novels as if they are straightforward autobiography, which I found somewhat irritating, the books may indeed have a lot of autobiographical detail in the, but they were not written as autobiography, and I found it a bit annoying that she constantly quotes from them as if they are.

Throughout the book, Laura Thompson freely reveals the identity of the murderer in many of the stories, so if you happen not to have read all of Agatha Christie's mysteries, you may need to be wary of this.

An interesting book, I didn't agree with everything the author had to say, but that only made it more enjoyable to read, there's nothing like having something to disagree with!

If you haven't already done so, I would recommend reading Mrs Christie's own fascinating autobiography before you read this.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Like wading through porridge
I found this book confusing and badly written - my attention was lost after the first chapter and I had no real enthusiasm for trudging on any further.
Published 1 month ago by Bachgen

3.0 out of 5 stars Long-winded and muddled
If only Laura Thompson had modelled her writing-style on Agatha Christie's clear,concise way of telling a story. Read more
Published 6 months ago by booksetc

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and Compelling
On the whole I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The account of Agatha's early life up to the famous "disappearance" was particularly interesting. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Mrs. J. Redmond

3.0 out of 5 stars Over reliance on the books to flesh out lack of original material
Any biographer of Agatha Christie has to deal with the fact that the 'Queen of Crime' guarded her privacy and never gave interviews, so there is a paucity of original material to... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Mr. T. Harvey

4.0 out of 5 stars Academically strong but lacks readability
I like my biographies to make a clear distinction between fact, opinion, supposition and downright fantasy. They should also follow a clear line, preferably chronological. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Amsterdamned

4.0 out of 5 stars Too thorough?
This book has so much to say about the genius that is Agatha Christie that it disappears under its own weigt from time to time. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Chuffnobbler

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't be put off by the length!
This is a hefty book, but worth the effort of reading it. True, it does give away a number of plot endings and details from the novels, but I assume that most people who are... Read more
Published 17 months ago by P. R. Scott

1.0 out of 5 stars Long-winded and disappointing
The facts of Agatha's life drown under an avalanche of opinions (mainly Thompson's which go on forever) and numerous quotes. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Sylvia "Voracious Reader"

5.0 out of 5 stars kate mosse is right!!!
I saw in the Guardian yesterday that Kate Mosse really loved this book. I know she is a Christie fan - as am I - and I totally agree with her! Read more
Published 19 months ago by J W Lindsay

4.0 out of 5 stars A very readable and interesting biography
Now a hardback bestseller, this chunky biography about one of the world's famous crime writers delves deep into the psychology into Agatha Christie's her work. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Barnaby

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