Writer and novelist
I’ve been re-watching the box set of The Gilmore Girls in preparation for the return of the show and I’m troubled by Rory’s early days at Chilton Preparatory School.
The storylines are strong, the characters are captivating, the witty dialogue whips along at breakneck speed — and yet our enjoyment of The Gilmore Girls’ experiences at Chilton Preparatory School in Hartford, New England comes with a hefty dose of unease.
Well, hello there, Lorelai and Rory! Is it really 15 years since we first knew you, and eight whole years since we last met?
It’s good to hear that you’re coming back to town for a brief spell — a chance for us to catch up and find out how the world’s treating you (glancing reference to the heart-wrenching song by the Louvin Brothers, inexplicably left out of the series’ encyclopedic range of cultural references).
Whether you have never read Agatha Christie or would like to explore her work a little further, here is a selection of her novels that should give a good idea of the nature of her work and whet your appetite for more.
These books are crammed with typical Christie pleasures:
- A murder or murders to be solved by Poirot or Marple
- A juicy cast of suspects
- A smattering of social comment and satire
- A helping of psychological interest
Each of these mysteries also has a particular flavour and emphasis which gives it an individual appeal. Perhaps you love logic and puzzles. Maybe you like stories of passion and romance, or are interested in the criminal mind. You might be intrigued by family secrets and relationships.
Acclaimed crime writers such as Sophie Hannah, Val McDermid and many others say that reading Agatha Christie when they were youngsters made them fall in love with mystery fiction. Me too.
In my case, the first Agatha Christie novel I read was Death on the Nile, which plunged me into a grown-up world of passion, sex, jealousy, greed, exotic places and even more exotic characters, and of course, murder. I gasped at the ingenious plot and the incredibly clever twist. I marvelled at the audacity with which the author baffled my expectations and assumptions.
This was the gateway novel which had me hooked and made me crave the deeper, darker, more dangerous and psychotic fixes which other crime novelists continue to provide.
Geraldine McEwan portrayed Miss Marple in the UK TV series from 2004 to 2009
Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple should be just a quaint period piece. An elderly lady with no professional experience assisting the police in murder enquiries? You must be joking, guv! And yet her popularity endures.
Although it may seem that Christie’s creation is outmoded and irrelevant to present-day attitudes and expectations, in many ways she embodies the recurring motifs of contemporary crime fiction.
Good news — Penguin Books have issued Penelope Mortimer’s 1962 novel, The Pumpkin Eater, as a Modern Classic, reawakening interest in this unique portrayal of a woman-on-the-edge, and introducing it to a new generation of readers.
It’s a compelling read, but not a comfortable one.
To a certain extent, the novel, and the 1964 film, scripted by Harold Pinter and directed with a sure, sensitive and arty hand by Jack Clayton, should provide an entertaining and perceptive look at marriage and relationships, but over and over again it challenges our expectations and overturns our assumptions.
The publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman has inevitably shone a spotlight on To Kill A Mockingbird, and in the glare of present-day sensibilities, both novels are criticised for their portrayal of attitudes to race, justice, equality.
Mockingbird’s lack of real radicalism and its blinkered, sanitised view of society is highlighted by the perspective presented by the later publication as the grown-up Scout discovers her father was not the champion of civil rights she had thought him to be.
For many of us, however, nuanced discussions of ideology are eclipsed by visceral cries of outrage at Watchman’s treatment of our favourite characters.
The friendship between Alicia Florrick and Kalinda Sharma in The Good Wife TV series shouldn’t work. It doesn’t tick any of the boxes commonly associated with fictional depictions of female friends.
For a start, they are an evenly matched pair — different, but equal presence, authority and appeal. No stunning or at least quirkily attractive dominant figure with overweight but feisty best friend here, thank you very much.
For girls of a certain age, our lifelong love affair with shoes displays many of the characteristics of our real life love affairs – pleasure, delight, pain, uncertainty, anxiety, regret.
From our early years, we were alerted to the nuances of shoe-wear and the subtleties of class and coolness signified by our choices.
Twinkle (Lynn Ripley), who sadly passed away last week, was a one-hit wonder of the 1960s. Her main claim to fame is a self-penned song about a lovers’ quarrel which culminates in Terry, the wronged boyfriend, riding off into the night, accelerating to his death, while she cries out in fright ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it!’
Her only consolation as she asks him to wait for her at the gates of heaven, is that one day he will know how hard she prayed for him to live.
Terry, which was released at the end of 1964, ticks the right boxes of teenage tragedy, and it should have more impact and resonance than it does. The problem, I think, lies in the relationship portrayed in the song, and also in Twinkle’s persona.
The Promised Land by Chuck Berry is a swooping, driving, head-on journey across America, well, not across as the crow or even a direct flight would take you, but down the South-east from Norfolk Virginia, through Texas and up to Los Angeles. The names of states and towns stud the song as we track the journey of the poor boy from Virginia who leaves home to find the rich life of California.
Chuck Berry wrote the song in 1964 when he was in prison. He traced the journey with the aid of an atlas, the use of which he was originally denied because it was thought he would use it to plan an escape. Which, of course, is what he did, but the escape Chuck describes in the song is from the metaphorical prison of poverty and lack of opportunity.
Thirty years on, how does the cool, clever, sophisticated investigator Jemima Shore in Antonia Fraser’s Oxford Blood measure up to her grittier sisters-in-detection?
Quite well, actually, if you are up for a light, racy, engaging read which hovers uncertainly between the crime and social satire genres, but pulls off an enjoyable story peopled with lively characters.
