Agatha christie biography thompson

Thompson reveals the Edwardian world in which Christie grew up, explores her relationships, including those with her two husbands and daughter, and investigates.
A passionate and accomplished writer, Laura Thompson now turns her highly acclaimed biographical skills to Agatha Christie.
This key statement comes at the center of Agatha Christie, A Mysterious Life, Laura Thompson's remarkable biography of the author.

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Agatha Christie

"Thompson mines this trove for clues not only to the writer’s inner life but also to her fiction’s recurring themes and enduring appeal. The woman who emerges in this elegant biography—shrewd, elusive, practical, romantic—cannot be defined by the era she immortalized. The queen of the cozy may be, in Thompson’s words, ‘stuck for all eternity at a tea-party in a country vicarage, sticking a fork into her seedcake as the bank manager’s wife chokes on a strychnine sandwich,’ but the lasting image here is poignant and fittingly chimerical."

– The Wall Street Journal

"A splendid biography. Thompson artfully demonstrates how Christie revealed in the Westmacott novels her pain about her collapsed first marriage, her difficult relationship with Rosalind and her overwhelming love for her mother. Christie, in essence, was the Elena Ferrante of her day [and] Christie’s flame burns extra bright in the present."

– Washington Post

"Sympathetic and insightful. Thompson makes cogent arguments for the craft and depth of Christie’s writing that will surely lead new readers

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Agatha Christie

Description

It has been one hundred years since Agatha Christie wrote her first novel and created the formidable Hercule Poirot. A brilliant and award winning biographer, Laura Thompson now turns her sharp eye to Agatha Christie. Arguably the greatest crime writer in the world, Christie's books still sell over four million copies each year--more than thirty years after her death--and it shows no signs of slowing.But who was the woman behind these mystifying, yet eternally pleasing, puzzlers? Thompson reveals the Edwardian world in which Christie grew up, explores her relationships, including those with her two husbands and daughter, and investigates the many mysteries still surrounding Christie's life, most notably, her eleven-day disappearance in 1926.Agatha Christie is as mysterious as the stories she penned, and writing about her is a detection job in itself. With unprecedented access to all of Christie's letters, papers, and notebooks, as well as fresh and insightful interviews with her grandson, daughter, son-in-law and their living relat

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“And so the story endures, infinitely fascinating; and those who would lay it to rest, who would destroy its beauty by ‘solving’ it, are defeated at every turn.”

This key statement comes at the center of Agatha Christie, A Mysterious Life, Laura Thompson’s remarkable biography of the author, which was published last year and which I’m just getting around to. Biographies aren’t really my thing: they’re often either too sensationalist or so exhaustive as to be exhausting. Plus, I’ve run into a few situations where these books yield unwelcome information about much beloved luminaries that taints, sometimes significantly, future enjoyment of their work.

But this couldn’t happen with Christie, my favorite author, of whom I already thought I knew a great deal, despite the fact that her own autobiography is one of the great disappointments of my reading life. Not that it wasn’t perfectly charming; it was simply unforthcoming of all the information I craved – about her inspiration, her methods, her feelings for her writing. (I was young when I approached the book,