{"id":30498,"date":"2024-09-09T08:00:22","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T08:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=30498"},"modified":"2024-09-06T17:40:56","modified_gmt":"2024-09-06T17:40:56","slug":"agatha-the-real-life-of-agatha-christie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2024\/09\/09\/agatha-the-real-life-of-agatha-christie\/","title":{"rendered":"Agatha – The Real Life of Agatha Christie"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Anne Martinetti<\/strong>, Guillaume Lebeau<\/strong> & Alexandre Franc<\/strong> translated by Edward Gauvin<\/strong> (SelfMadeHero)
\nISBN: 978-1-91059-311-0 (TPB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

This year celebrates 125 years since the birth of Agatha Christie and it\u2019s rather odd to think that someone so quintessentially English, purportedly old-fashioned and adamantly upper (middle) class can belong to the entire world, but in the case of Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan DBE it\u2019s inescapably true.<\/p>\n

Anointed both \u201cQueen of Crime\u201d and \u201cQueen of Mystery\u201d she remains the author of the world\u2019s longest continually running play – The Mouse Trap<\/strong> – and is officially Earth\u2019s best-selling fiction author. Moreover, she was Really Quite Good at her job and if you\u2019re the one who hasn\u2019t read her yet, just get on with it: you are letting the side down most dreadfully…<\/p>\n

Her literary appeal and plotting ingenuity, as most effectively expressed throughout this pictorial perambulation via metafictional icons Hercule Poirot<\/strong> and Miss Jane Marple<\/strong> (and many other creations (such as Tommy & Tuppence<\/strong>, Mr. Parker Pyne<\/strong>, Harlequin<\/strong> and Ariadne Oliver<\/strong>), is truly global and inspires generations of readers every day.<\/p>\n

Such can be seen in her own fictive alter ego Ariadne Oliver and the many other depictions of the author-as-investigator, as seen in graphic novels like The Detection Club<\/a><\/strong> or this bold offering from France blending incontrovertible fact with rational deduction, wild extrapolation and delicious speculative fantasy on the manner of highly polished professional Fan Fic…<\/p>\n

Agatha – La vraie vie d’Agatha Christie <\/em><\/strong>was co-written by author\/Editor Anne Martinetti (Creams and Punishments<\/strong>) and author\/documentarian\/graphic novelist Guillaume Lebeau (Crimes on Ice<\/strong>). Beguilingly illustrated by Alexandre Franc (Victor et l\u2019Ourours<\/em><\/strong>, Mai 68: Histoire d\u2019un Printemps<\/em><\/strong>, Le Satellites<\/em><\/strong>, Cher R\u00e9gis Debray<\/em><\/strong>), it was released in 2014 and made it into English as Agatha – The Real Life of Agatha Christie<\/strong> two years later.<\/p>\n

Telling tales within tales, it takes as its starting point the infamous but true \u201clady vanishes\u201d incident from December 1926 and from that event weaves a mesmerising tapestry exploring the childhood and early unsettled existence of Agatha Miller and the stellar life – or lives – she ultimately made with the sweat of her brow…<\/p>\n

That only really began after extricating herself from an extremely troubled marriage to dashing pilot-turned-failed-businessman Archibald Christie<\/em>…
\n\"\"
\nAlthough this story is awash in fact, drenched in detail and delivered with compelling charm I\u2019m not sharing much of that with you: magnanimously opting to let readers enjoy the unfolding and infinitely re-readable glee of seeing a true world – if not real life – enigma peeled back before your very eyes, whilst all around you some of the most captivating character-play and psychological analysis ever concocted holds the attention and hopefully tickles your little grey cells…<\/p>\n

Playfully messing with chronology we see her life and death, disappearance and rise to dominance, capacity to forward-plan, wild adventurous life and loves as well as possibly peeking within, thanks to beguiling t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eates<\/em> between Agatha and her great, incisive, pitilessly unforgiving and inescapably present totemic creations…
\n\"\"
\nAll the compelling speculation on events, triggers and their aftermath are bolstered by a lengthy and comprehensive Appendices<\/em> section, containing an extremely complete Timeline<\/em> of her eventful life, backed up with a mammoth Bibliography<\/em> of her many, many, so many books and plays…<\/p>\n

A sublimely visual examination of the world\u2019s most accomplished wordsmith, Agatha – The Real Life of Agatha Christie<\/strong> pulls off the near impossible trick of using a picture book to make literature irresistible. Surely you need to see for yourself?
\n\u00a9 Hachette Livre (Marabout) Paris 2014. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Anne Martinetti, Guillaume Lebeau & Alexandre Franc translated by Edward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero) ISBN: 978-1-91059-311-0 (TPB\/Digital edition) This year celebrates 125 years since the birth of Agatha Christie and it\u2019s rather odd to think that someone so quintessentially English, purportedly old-fashioned and adamantly upper (middle) class can belong to the entire world, but in the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Agatha – The Real Life of Agatha Christie”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[115,75,214,102,122,125,216,225,170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-crime-comics","category-european","category-fantasy","category-historical","category-humour","category-lifestyle","category-mystery","category-non-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-7VU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30502,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30498\/revisions\/30502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}