I feel I should preface this endeavor with the fact that I do not generally enjoy reading biographies. It isn't just that I don't naturally gravitate towards them. I usually dislike reading them. Either they are salacious and contain facts I'd rather not know or they are dull. I am tremendously interested in people but maybe not in feelings and biographies seem to be more about feelings than just facts about a person's life. If I must read a biography, I try to read one written for children, which will contain just about the right amount of information to satisfy me.
In the case of Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley, I decided to make an exception. Agatha Christie is my favorite author and I find Lucy Worsley's programs on PBS highly entertaining and informative, so I felt the two together would be a good match. And I was mostly right. Although I have gleaned a great deal about Mrs. Christie over the years, I still learned a fair amount. I greatly enjoyed the pictures included, as well.
If I have a complaint about the book, it is that I felt that the author was putting her personal interpretation onto facts that could not sustain them. This was particularly true in the case of Mrs. Christie's infamous disappearance. (For those who don't know, following a domestic upset with her husband, Agatha disappeared for 11 days in December, 1926. She was eventually tracked down to a spa hotel under the name Teresa Neele, which was somewhat similar to the name of the cause of the domestic upset: Miss Nancy Neele, her husband's mistress.) This case was a huge media sensation when it happened and curiosity about it never completely died down for the remainder of Agatha's life. This is, in part, because Agatha refused completely to discuss it. To be clear, Agatha Christie lived until January 1976, nearly 50 years after the disappearance, and refused to publicly discuss the disappearance. If she left any private record of what took place, it has either been destroyed or still remains private.
Lucy Worsley speculates that Mrs. Christie had a mental health crisis that resulted in her disappearance and whatever else took place during those 11 days. She may be right, but we don't know. We still don't really know what happened during those 11 days. I feel the talk of a mental health crisis is very modern. I know the fact of mental health crises is not a recent invention - it is only recently that we have been able to acknowledge these occurrences. It felt like Lucy Worsley wanted to talk about mental health and we were really hearing her thoughts on this, rather than anything based on any evidence regarding Agatha Christie.
Overall, however, the book was very interesting and I highly recommend it. If you enjoy biographies, especially biographies of trailblazing women, or you are just interested in Agatha Christie, give this a try. There is also an accompanying PBS documentary. I have not watched this yet, as I have been waiting to finish the book. Soon, though!
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