Book Review: "Agatha Christie" by Lucy Worsley (Pt.3)

This review covers chapter 24 through to chapter 30

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The back and forth of whether to marry Max is described by Lucy Worsley as troubling for Agatha. She was aware of the mistake she made by marrying Archie and didn't want to make the same one. Max hadn't told his father, whom he lived with, of the engagement - but was adamant he wanted to marry a woman almost fifteen years' older than him. The differences between Archie and Max are again, made even more pronounced by the fact that Archie wanted to play golf and be away from Agatha and Max wanted to read her Ancient Greek Poetry and be around her always. Lucy Worsley paints us a picture of Agatha's life through these two men - one of which treated her badly, the other who is a shy, but gentle person.

After having a marriage with Max that constitutes something of a romance, she finds herself growing away from him as they begin to spend more and more time apart. In this line of the narrative, more books are published, more trips are taken and even Rosalind - her daughter - gets married. Unfortunately, Rosalind's husband would be killed in World War 2 and the child of Agatha Christie would essentially become what is described as something near to a walking ghost. Lucy Worsley controls tone and impact perfectly. It is not a devastation, but rather a quiet possibility of what everyone already knew but were too afraid to admit.

As we know, Max and Agatha are growing apart and Agatha is starting to realise that she isn't a young woman anymore. But she has also since met Stephen, a young academic man with the face of a pixie. Was she having an extra-maritial affair? Who knows. Lucy Worsley is careful not to imply this way or that, instead she gives us both possibilities and, as with Agatha's disappearance, wants us to make up our own minds about what might have happened. This is what I love about Lucy Worsley's writing. She is keen to give us the information that is there, but she also presents us with every single avenue of possibility when we don't have all the information. She avoids reaching stretchy conclusions herself, but likes to whisper in the reader's ear about this and that. It's like gossiping about someone with your friend and coming up with all these wild theories. I quite enjoy it because it balances well with the nonfiction tone of the book.

We know that by this point, there was a lot of stress in Agatha's life during these years. She was disconnecting from her second husband, in a possible affair with a younger man, she was dealing with a daughter who had lost her husband and seemingly - her soul - and on top of this she was still trying to write popular crime novels. This. All of this during the wartime period and yet, she was still determined to remain steadfast, even though she was becoming paler and thinner with it.

Be that as it may, we also see the failed attempt at a pseudonym by Agatha Christie. She wrote under another name and yet, everyone had found out it was her. I think this is probably telling of Agatha's fame and the want for people to understand her writing and her style. She could never really hide as the most famous writer in the country by this point and yet, she was still working ferociously on a new novel or two. She had even not gone to work because of it. As we move on to the end of the war, we get even more shocking information: Agatha's nephew had become and MP and her marriage was seemingly no longer in too much of a struggle with regular writing now bursting through slightly.

Yes, it is strange that she was found out so soon, but I think it definitely pays testament to the fact that she was enabling a bunch of readers in England who all wanted to be the detective in their own stories. It just so happens that Agatha was the person they wanted to find out about the most.