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Loading... Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the… (2009)by John Curran
None.  kaggsy | Jan 7, 2013 |  Interesting find of how Christie decided on her plots and wrote her novels. If you haven't read her books don't use this book to learn about them because the plot is often given away. (  ) tricia013101 | Mar 11, 2012 | Here's an immediate warning: if you're not a real Agatha Christie fan, and by that I mean someone who's read and re-read at least three-quarters of her many books, then John Curran's new look into Christie's notebooks is not for you. On the plus side, however, at this point there are still many of you right here with me. Such is the scope and depth of Christie's popularity! John Curran, a Christie enthusiast and scholar, made a remarkable discovery: a cache of Christie's original hand-written notebooks in which she sketched out story ideas, plots and characters -- and grocery lists and doodles. He spends nearly 500 erudite and very well-written pages taking us through these notebooks, with frequent scanned excerpts included. The result is a fascinating archeological expedition for Christie fans. Curran wisely makes no attempt to organize his explorations chronologically, since Christie worked seemingly almost at random at any given point in several notebooks at once, and would come back to them years later and add material. He therefore sets things out thematically, i.e. notes on stories with similar themes are discussed in discrete chapters, since it's on this track that we can best see highlighted the way in which Christie's mind worked, often expanding the genesis of an idea into a story, and then into a full-fledged novel. Perhaps the most revealing and fascinating insight here is how Christie was in many ways the antithesis of her best-loved protagonist, i.e. one Hercule Poirot. Whereas for the latter all must be order assembled by the motions of the little grey cells, Christie's mind was a chaotic grab-bag of inspiration, sometimes futile stabs at organization, and outright detritus. An added bonus here is the text of two heretofore unpublished Poirot short stories, including a fascinating variation on the final story of The Labours of Hercule Poirot. I found this book good fun to read through, and well worth holding on to as a reference. (  )2  mrtall | Aug 6, 2011 | Juicy details for any Christie fan. Although -- in many cases Curran gives a brief blurb about the book being discussed, similar to what would be on the jacket cover, then starts in on how the book appears in he notebooks. A more detailed synopsis would be useful, because, really, just saying something like "Poirot investigates mysterious affairs at a country house, where a wealthy family bickers over an inheritance," narrows it down to, oh, all of her books. Little help here! *Which* adenoidal housemaid are we talking about? *Which* absent-minded vicar? And ok, I know it's bad form to say who did it, but seriously, these books are 50 years old. I doubt anyone who is reading Curran's book is really that concerned with spoilers. (  ) mkschoen | May 11, 2010 | this is cosy interesting reading. To find AC's ideas mixed up in between shopping lists and alternative denouements is very enjoyable! Just looking at her handwriting is fun. vanessajw | Oct 2, 2009 |
 Curran knows his subject backwards, but he's too much of a fan to be an objective critic.  For all its thoroughness, this book only skims the surface of her mysterious mind; which is no bad thing, perhaps  Evidence of the breadth of Christie's imagination can also be found in the tantalizing trails she left that never went anywhere. Curran tracks motifs and ideas that crop up again and again over many years but that were never realized in her published books.
References to this work on external resources.
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Wikipedia in English (4)
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http://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/recent-reads-agatha-chri... (