James Marriott in the Times, March 2020, celebrates the 100-year anniversary of the publication of Christie's debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. He reveals that he "raced through the Poirot novels" aged 11. I wonder if he's read them since?
He's reread Styles, at least, and gives credit where it's due. But "this is not the world of Jo Nesbo or Ian Rankin". Perhaps because it was written just after World War One, when angst-ridden soul-searching and gruesome autopsies didn't sell? And now we've got Christie's first novel out of the way, how are we going to fill up the space?
With clichés!
"Christie had little talent for or interest in characterisation. Her memoirs are notable for their lack of introspection." Marriott claims that Christie "couldn't remember" the week of her disappearance. Perhaps he means that she fails to mention it in her memoirs. (She gave an interview shortly afterwards, showing that she remembered that week quite well.)
Christie’s thin characterisation is the aspect of her work that has attracted most hostility from critics. In his 1945 essay Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? Edmund Wilson complained that in Christie’s books “you cannot become interested in the characters, because they never can be allowed an existence of their own even in flat two dimensions”.
How about giving your own analysis, James, instead of quoting a 75-year-old essay? Especially one that gets quoted by every journalist assigned to write two broadsheet pages about Christie?
In his brilliant essay on Christie’s novels... John Lanchester provides a masterly deconstruction of the character of Poirot. He is, Lanchester contends, “the worst detective of all... [the] least likeable, most implausible, most annoying, vainest, and the one whose characterisation is most dependent on whimsical details that add nothing in terms of psychological insight”.
But what does James think? And Poirot's obsessive need for symmetry surely helps him unravel many a tangled tale?
"Christie's novels are puzzles." We are told. Oh, really? Styles is a "chessboard" or "game of Cluedo". Poirot is "clockwork".
Christie’s work has never gone out of fashion because puzzles don’t date the way novels do... The timeless appeal of her fiction meant Christie was able to go on writing well into old age.
On the contrary, Christie's novels are a gift to the social historian because they are rooted so firmly in the year in which they were written. She recorded the minutest change in fashions, manners, morals and fashionable ideas. From the cloche hats of the 20s (so useful for disguise) to the Sloppy Joe jumpers of the early 60s, from parlourmaids to "lady helps", from ouija boards to Freud – she missed nothing. And this is why I love her books.
More from the Times here.
