When I bought this from the bargain table of a secondhand bookshop, the lady behind the counter predicted that I'd really enjoy it. She was spot on, although I initially balked at the size, thinking, 'This had better be good, Agatha!' It exceeded my expectations by far, and I know it'll be high among my ten best reads of the year. It's brimming with humor, and wise philosophical observations which come from living a long and interesting life.
MY THOUGHTS:
As far as I see, Agatha Christie's tips for living a good life amount to four key attitudes
1) Try anything once.
2) Be flexible.
3) Set your mind on stubborn enjoyment. (If she were taking a gift to a child at a christening, Agatha would choose a naturally happy frame of mind.)
4) A sense of humour is vital.
On a personal note, I was instantly riveted because Agatha's early family dynamic was an exact replica of mine. She was the baby of the family, with a far older sister and brother, which meant she was frequently thrown on her own resources, and had to invent her own private style of fun from scratch. Perhaps being the late addition to any family unit helps us dig deep to craft our own personal inner world. I once considered it a drawback of my own life, but now, with the help of this book, see it as a formative benefit. And Agatha exited this world in the same decade I was just beginning it, the 1970s.
The autobiography begins with Agatha's early childhood during the late Victorian era with her parents, older siblings, and a household of servants in their beloved and blessed home named Ashfield. Agatha remembers the servants being happily appreciated for doing excellent, expert work. In her memory, they often loom as tyrants rather than menials.
Her reflections about this stage of her life have convinced me that no modern person can possibly even begin to imagine the standard of fun enjoyed by Victorian and Edwardian kids from well-off families.
Interestingly, Agatha doesn't recall her early world being remotely patriarchal, the way we've come to understand the word. The old matriarchs ruled the social fabric with rods of iron.
She says:
'We women have behaved like mugs. We have clamoured to be allowed to work as men work. Men, not being fools, have taken kindly to the idea. Why support a wife? What's wrong with a wife supporting herself? She wants to do it. By golly, she can go on doing it.'
This girl took everything in her stride, including a teenage ambition to become a concert pianist, hard, gruelling VAD work nursing during her twenties in WW1, and later in the hospital dispensary, where she learned a lot about poisons and different substances that benefited her mystery writing in the years ahead. And she always manages to piece out fascinating, hilarious incidents from the mundane.
She describes her marriage to Archibald Christie, the first great love of her life, the birth of their daughter, Rosalind, and the aftermath in which Archie breaks their marriage and Agatha's heart when he leaves her for another woman. This book has softened my opinion of Archie, although I expected the opposite. For Agatha herself paints a great picture of him, and a bit of googling reveals that Rosalind remained on good terms with her father, and that far from being a general two-timer and cheat, he stuck with his second wife, Nancy, until the end of his days.
The latter part of the book covers Agatha's second marriage to the archaeologist, Max Mallowan, who was fourteen years Agatha's junior. It includes heaps of travel to exotic and daunting locations, their lifestyle on his excavation sites in the middle east, and their survival during the second great war of that terrible 20th century.
Her musings about progress, and what might be in store for us next, are rather ironic. ('I would like to be able to look into the future and see the next steps: one feels they will follow quickly on one another now, with a snowballing effect.') What would Agatha think if she knew the future would contain an AI version of herself teaching a virtual creative writing class, for that fact has been popping up on my newsfeed recently. From the tone of this book, I imagine it might be shock.
The only slight warning I'll offer is that Agatha, swept along by nostalgia, gets a bit plot-spoilerish about some of her earliest titles. So if you haven't read them yet, keep this in mind.
So as not to inflate this review unduly, I'll add another blog post down the track specifically dealing with Agatha Christie's reflections about writing. For now, I'll finish off with a great quote from the autobiography.
'It is astonishing how much you can enjoy almost everything. There are few things more desirable than to be an acceptor and an enjoyer. You can like and enjoy almost any kind of food or way of life. You can enjoy country life, dogs, muddy walks, towns, noise, people, chatter. In the one there is repose, ease for nerves, time for reading, knitting, embroidery, and the pleasure of growing things. In the other, theatres, art galleries, good concerts, seeing friends you would otherwise seldom see. I am happy to say that I can enjoy almost everything.'
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