When going away from home, one of the important decisions, along what clothes, shoes, documents to take, is what books get to join me on the trip.
We had been planning this trip for some time, so in my mind I was already doing a sorting exercise. Initially I had settled on two impressive tomes of omnibus published works. I had selected them, I was quite pleased with myself and was mentally looking forward to the time I will spend reading them.
But then, looking at them I got this image of me going to the beach or to a bench to read and lugging along the large, and most importantly heavy, books. On vacation I usually just carry around a tiny bag to keep my wallet, my keys and my phone, so if I were to carry the book(s) a backpack would be needed. So no, no, change of plans!
Happily Alina’s library contains books of all sizes, so I pulled out a selection of tiny, but punchy, books. These books, old paperbacks most of them, fit easily in my tiny bag and also can be easily spread out in my luggage if needed. So win-win!
I started reading one of them, Ruth Rendell’s The Keys to the Street, but I found it a bit too dark, so searching something a bit lighter I turned my attention to another one in my travel library, Agatha Christie’s Murder After Hours.
I associate Agatha Christie with entertaining, engaging books, readable and easy going, so when Murder After Hours turned out to be this insightful, wonderfully written, psychological analysis of a group of people and the relationships between them, I was in awe and hooked.
I mean, the chapter where Henrietta speaks about her work as a sculptor and destroys her creation. Mind blowing! So, so beautifully written, it just stuns you and you cannot put it down!
The edition I have, found in an Irish Charity shop, is an edition published in the US in 1976, and it is the book above in the image. I found it annoying and endearing that on the cover they have John dead by a water fountain, while in the book he is killed by the side of a swimming pool. I assume this kind of mistake makes the edition special.
I read the book in one fine swoop and loved every word of it finding so many gems in it. Oh, how I wish I had known Agatha Christie … Anyway maybe in the next life!
My favorite character is Miss Marple, but I also like Poirot’s fastidiousness and obsessive compulsive ways, but in this book he appears in a strange way, like he is a visitor in the book not like one of the characters. His existence is tangential and not central in the book.
I found the answer for that while doing my post read research. I sometimes do that for books that I really like. Seems that Agatha (please let me call her Agatha, I love her so much!) had written the book without Mr. Poirot in it, but the publishers strongly suggested that, for commercial reasons, he should be added. So she did, but you can see, you can feel it, when reading the book that he feels like an afterthought.
When Agatha adapted the novel for stage in 1951 she removed Poirot completely.
The book was written in 1946 and it was published in the UK as The Hollow and for the US market the name was changed to Murder After Hours, as the publishers felt the first title was too difficult to relate to by US audiences.
I much prefer The Hollow, as it has this delicious double ententre, it is indeed the name of the English country house where the main action takes place, but it also is a state of feeling of the characters from beginning to end, they are hollow, and this is the tragedy of existence that drives the drama of the book.
Murder After Hours is Meh!
I looked up if it was adapted for tv and I found it was in 2004 for the Poirot series with David Suchet. Series 9, episode 4. Of course I had to watch it! Happily Netflix has recently added both Poirot and Miss Marple so I can watch and rewatch to my heart’s content!
I watched it last night and they are different, so, so different! I love the book, it has such a wealth of feeling and depth of understanding that could not be translated in the tv adaptation, but I liked the episode. Of course I enjoyed David Suchet’s Poirot, I loved the clothes and the wonderful recreation of the atmosphere, bit it does not come close to the complexity of the book, it couldn’t.
If you are stuck for what to read, I totally recommend this book, it is tiny but by God it packs a powerful punch!
Thanks, I'll look out for it!