The secret life of Agatha Christie: Serena Dandini’s review

TOGatha Christie She is the best -selling author in the world, two billion bookstranslated into more than one hundred languages ​​even in Swahili, and, if we think about it, it is also the most lethal serial killer since in the pages of his novels, yellow tales and theatrical work has exterminated hundreds of victims, most of them in a very cruel way.

The iconographic image of the writer who has been handed down to us is that of a sweet granny with pearl necklacethe impeccable permanent and a cup of tea in hand that tastes sitting in a lush garden where he certainly has just finished putting dalie and tulips. She herself has always defined a simple housewife with modesty, candidly affirming that they write “romances” just to have fun. Still, something doesn’t come back.

I had already guessed it by doing research for my book Chronicles of Paradise: To the fascinating Dark-Side little known of the English yellowist I had dedicated a chapter. The creator of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot was much more modern and unscrupulous than what he wanted to make us believe. Not only because it was one of the first women to surf the waves of the Hawaii islands and to marry a 14 -year -old man younger than her in second wedding, the fascinating archaeologist Max Mallowan. In her opinion the best husband for a woman because “the more she ages, the more he will find her interesting”.

To give us back a complete and passionate and very well documented biographical of Agatha has arrived in the bookstore The secret life of Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsley (Salani Editore), an unmissable book not only for all fans like me of the writer, but also for those who love English history and certain atmospheres breathe by looking at series like The Crown And Downton Abbey.

The life of Christie embraced two world wars, has been handled and fascinating like his novels, and also at times mysterious. I refer naturally to the now mythological episode of his disappearance nEl 1926, when for eleven long days of Agatha, all traces were lost and even Arthur Conan Doyle himself participated in his research Together with Scotland Yard.

Lucy Worsley investigated all the implications of that intricate story, like any other fold of its existence, without neglecting the deepest and literary sides, giving readers a human portrait full of Sense of humor of one of the greatest narrators of the twentieth century.

All articles by Serena Dandini.