--- product_id: 4131331 title: "Agatha Christie: An English Mystery" brand: "laura thompson" price: "€ 327.50" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.gr/products/4131331-agatha-christie-an-english-mystery store_origin: GR region: Greece --- # Agatha Christie: An English Mystery **Brand:** laura thompson **Price:** € 327.50 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Agatha Christie: An English Mystery by laura thompson - **How much does it cost?** € 327.50 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.gr](https://www.desertcart.gr/products/4131331-agatha-christie-an-english-mystery) ## Best For - laura thompson enthusiasts ## Why This Product - Trusted laura thompson brand quality - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Full description not available ## Images ![Agatha Christie: An English Mystery - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41axrvVpeFL.jpg) ![Agatha Christie: An English Mystery - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41MAKkA8YOL.jpg) ![Agatha Christie: An English Mystery - Image 3](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/31qjYfG8p7L.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Excellent Biography *by G***N on Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2013* First of all, let me note with regard to the over-all rating, that with so few reviews a couple of negative reviews will have a disproportionately heavy impact on the review--and one's impression reading them. It certainly does not make for a representative sample in any scientific sense. This pertains to my review as well. Only many more reviews can solve this.That being said, I do indeed recommend this biography. I think it pairs well with Morgan's biography from 1986. Every great writer deserves a fresh biography every decade--at the most every two decades. So Christie--particularly in light of the fact that she is the second most successful writer ever--certainly deserves continued biographical treatment.Thompson belongs to the newer approach to biography, which is aware of itself as an imaginative, essentially hermeneutic, leap. It is very hard to claim full objective truth when it comes to a life. One imagines one's way into the life. One makes it clear one is doing that. In the hopes that a fuller sense of the lived life will be communicated. Objective facts are verifiable, yet they will never give us a sense of the inner life. This is Thompson's approach, and I think it is highly successful. Let me point out a couple of things I liked.Thompson starts out by considering Christie's childhood home, Ashfield. The importance of Ashfield for Christie cannot be overstated. It defined the very sense of "home" for her and remained a source of wonderful memories throughout her life. Christie struggled to hold on to the house as long as possible, finally giving it up once it had been swallowed up by the suburban expansion of Torquay (and to help fund another dream home, Greenway.) When she heard it was going to be demolished, she desperately tried to save it. What Thompson recounts as part of this is her own journey to the site of Ashfield. All that remains to indicate the site is a blue plaque on a small rock not much bigger than it next to a bus stop in front of a sadly plain pseudo-modernist apartment building. It is a great allegory for the dilemma of the biographer. How to bring something back to life that was so important to your subject, when absolutely nothing tangible remains to suggest what it was like? It's a brilliant gesture on Thompson's part. And makes us aware of so much at the same time.Another thing that stood out for me was her discussion of Christie's first marriage. She totally changed how I saw Archie Christie. Everything I've read about him makes him seem like the most horrifying narcissist. Which of course makes one wonder how on earth's name Christie fell for him. But what Thompson makes clear is that that kind of narcissism, while it focuses on you, is incredibly sexy. It's the stuff of romance novels. Plus, Thompson shows how Archie's absolute certainty and insistence about so many things would be compelling to someone who naturally over-thought things. Christie admired decisiveness and action. So Thompson helped me to understand Christie's first marriage in a way I never did before. Something like that--which is so important to Christie's life story, psychology and fiction--is by itself justification to praise this biography.As with this mode of biography in general, there will be places where you will probably disagree with the imaginative work Thompson does. But I am sure every reader will at the same time come across so many things where you feel that Thompson has hit true pay dirt, that it will finally seem that this is simply part of the territory for an approach that truly tries to understand this notoriously private writer. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Biography that Does not Disappoint *by V***E on Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2020* Thompson researches Agatha’s life with enthusiasm for the artist Christie became as well as her roots researching her childhood so we understand the journey of the girl growing up to be the author, business woman, playwright and icon. Christie had a life that Thompson illustrates amply with quotations from Agatha’s own writing - her mysteries - insightful and clever prose, Agatha’s keen awareness of human frailty is traced vividly in 1926 when she suffered a breakdown having faced facts about her first husband’s infidelity and the loss of her marriage soon after her beloved mother dies.It is the success of The Mousetrap that brings a crystal clear focus to her life in her second phase: a new marriage and second chance at travel adventures.Very well researched. I recommend it for novices and fans- it has a Downton Abbey undertone of the early years of her life- fascinating time to be a woman author. ### ⭐⭐⭐ Well-research but oddly preachy. *by A***R on Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2016* The first half of this book drew heavily on Christie's autobiography, repeating stories almost word-for-word from that source without much new to add and as such it was hard to get through. However, the second half was thoroughly well-researched and I found it both enlightening and entertaining. The main drawback of this book is the author's tendency to preach at her audience. Throughout the book, she makes multiple digs at modern life and modern women that this modern woman living her modern life found distracting. She also tends to overreach herself when drawing conclusions. For example, her insistence that Agatha's weight in later life was a conscious choice, a sort of blubbery armor used by the author to protect her wounded soul is both not supported by any facts and seriously condescending. The woman liked to eat and spent much of her life sitting at a typewriter. 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