January

I’m not sure why I selected this book and having finished it I’m still bewildered by it. With a weirdly complicated and meandering plot and a large family of only mildly pleasant characters it held me in thrall despite myself. It was overwhelmingly moving at times and perfectly captured the haunting power of a favourite children’s book. The second half plays with sly humour in the modern circus of chat-show and celebrity. A very modern story with roots in the dark forest behind the family home.

This is misery for the middle-classes. A marriage disintegrates but the household remains well-managed by staff and the child attends a good school. The details of the early 1950s are gorgeous, the cars shiny and the houses large but the heartbreak is real. Beautifully detailed about the tiny moments on which the future can turn, with complex and believable characters. The heroine has done everything right but despite her fortunate beauty, she’s overtaken.

When is Agatha Christie not Agatha Christie? When she wrote the play and Charles Osborne turned it into a novel. Christie remains by a long way the most popular female playwright in the world, not that you’d know it if you read any serious studies of theatre. She continues to astonish and delight and for every Christmas Christie on TV there’s probably something familiar in the line-up at your local regional theatre. This book suffers from the need to keep the action “on stage” but if you’re reading it you probably don’t mind. For a good look at Christie’s work on stage I suggest All About Agatha, a great podcast with an episode called All About The (stage) Plays of Agatha Christie.

Continuing my trend of reading the big hits about a year after everyone else, I raced through this in darkest January. I really enjoyed the reading but found it slightly unsatisfying. I wish the central character had been able to adapt slightly, but maybe that’s the point? The suffering rains down on her and she’s unchanged, unbending. We’re encouraged to find her uplifting but the impact she has on other women felt a bit late-in-the-day for me. Charming dog and child though. The subject is serious, and for working women of a certain age there will be lots of nodding in agreement.