agatha christie biography laura thompson

Thompson makes cogent arguments for the craft and depth of Christie’s writing that will surely lead new readers to her books-exactly where she would have wanted the focus. This ambitious, thorough biography will delight fans of the author and her iconic detective characters, Poirot and Miss Marple. Thompson shows how Christie infused her stories with experiences and incidents drawn from her own life, including her disappearance.

This rhapsodic biography is an account of Christie’s real life with passages from her fiction artfully interwoven, illustrating how the very private Christie really felt about things. Christie, in essence, was the Elena Ferrante of her day Christie’s flame burns extra bright in the present.Ī deep, reverential glide through the quiet life of one of the great writers of the 20th century. 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. 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.Ī splendid biography.

The woman who emerges in this elegant biography-shrewd, elusive, practical, romantic-cannot be defined by the era she immortalized. 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.

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 relations, Thompson is able to unravel not only the detailed workings of Christie's detective fiction, but the truth behind this mysterious woman. 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. A brilliant and award winning biographer, Laura Thompson now turns her sharp eye to Agatha Christie.

It has been one hundred years since Agatha Christie wrote her first novel and created the formidable Hercule Poirot.

Agatha christie biography laura thompson