A few months ago I started reading to my 95 year-old grandma. She had been an avid reader throughout her life, but in recent years her eyesight has started failing her. I was reading The Time Traveler’s Wife (haven’t quite finished it yet), and in it Clare would read to her blind grandmother. What a fabulous idea, albeit not a new one. We already had a standing movie night, but reading would be so much more fun. Of course I told her that she must tell me if my reading was too horrid, and we would stop.
I had been on a mad Miss Marple run (see my previous Marple vs. Marple post), and had watched all of
the episodes, such a good show. I
suggested we read an Agatha Christie book, and picked up Death on the
Nile. Oh goodness me, it was probably
not the best book to start with. First
off, it is dialogue heavy, which made it difficult for me to read. There were bad French and English accents
involved. An actress I am not!! Plus there was a lot of French randomly
thrown in. I nearly failed French in
school, but my Grandma speaks it. She
was so patient with me, as I massacred the poor language. Add on the fact that I couldn't even say “Poirot”,
and resorted to calling him Mr. P. I’m
sure Ms. Christie was rolling over in her grave!!
Surprisingly, I was overall rather disappointed. I think my expectations were a little too
high. It was enjoyable, and had a good
twist at the end. It just took forever
to get going. In fact, my grandma and I
were out to dinner before we were going to read one night. I asked her if she thought someone was going
to die tonight, and she said “Oh I hope so!”
Seriously, it took forever for someone to die. Once they did though, the bodies started to
fall. I was surprised. It definitely had its fun bits, and the
ending was quite twisty, a bit twisted actually.
As someone who is writing their first novel, I think what I’m
taking away is the awareness of pacing. It
was really slow to start, and took forever for them to just get on the boat. What I loved though, was that all of her
characters were so strong and vivid. My
grandma had to have a cheat sheet to keep everyone straight. There were quite a few and she IS 95. It did give me quite a bit to think
about. In fact, I have a story that her
writing has directly influenced. Oddly
it is her characterizations that have inspired me, not her murder plot.
Sidebar:
I just saw that there’s a Poirot Mystery with
Emily Blunt playing Linnet Doyle and Emma Griffiths Malin (Fleur from Forsythe
Saga) playing Jacqueline de Bellefort.
Oh hells bells, I just put it at the top of my Netflix queue!!
Emily as Linnet
Emma as Jacqueline
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