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Wednesday June 30, 2010
Books in June
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The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics Nury Vittachi
This is a "Feng Shui detective novel" - part of a series - a remarkably original gift from my step-daughter. It is a light-hearted humorous book - albeit rather black humour. Personally, I feel sorry for the elephant - yes, I am afraid to tell you that innocent elephants were indeed harmed in the making of this book.... -
Sparkling Cyanide Agatha Christie
[Read by Robin Bailey]
I enjoy listening to Robin Bailey reading Agatha Christie novels. His voice is like a comfortable chair - like listening to one of my old uncles reading to me (not that they ever did - this is an imaginary uncle).
I first read this novel when I was a teenager in a single afternoon - but remember little of the plot, as so often happens when you read a book quickly. Listening to it now, I quickly realised that this is a revamp of the short story "Yellow Iris" (1937) which featured Poirot. This novel (1945) does not feature her famous detective - though it does feature his good friend "Colonel Race". However, it is told from the point of view of an innocent heroine, Iris, (as opposed to Iris being the victim in the short story) and the victim is her sister Rosemary "for remembrance" whose character is somewhat altered and expanded. [The person wot dunnit has also changed!].
Iris does not see quite everything as we the readers do, and it is a (slightly) psychological thriller similar in feel to Margery Allingham's "Black Plumes". Will she escape the fate of her sister? Is she in love with the murderer?
I recently watched a very modernised TV adaptation (2003) starring Pauline Collins and Oliver Ford Davies - where they appear to be playing some kind of "Tommy and Tuppence" characters in a pretty unconvincing scenario (to be fair - probably no more unconvincing than those two fictional characters and their plots always were!) -
Taken at the Flood Agatha Christie
[Read by Hugh Fraser]
It was good to listen to the original text - and good to hear Hugh Fraser reading it. I have seen/heard several adaptations including the radio play - which seemed to stick pretty closely to the novel - and the TV adaptation as part of the David Suchet Poirot series - which did not.
I did not much like the deviations in the TV adaptation - I think they were done mainly to fit with resetting the plot into the 1930s. As a consequence the fundamental foundation of the story line becomes a pre-planned "gas" explosion rather than an unplanned air raid. This not only does not fit half as well with the characters and their occupations (the heroine has been away serving her country and the emphasis is on how the war disrupted all their lives) but it also rather spoils the title reference.
"There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures."
It is a quote about grasping an opportunity as it arises - now or never. It is not about anything preplanned.
I am not universally opposed to plot changes to suit adaptations of AC's work. Some are very original and she herself rewrote her own plots (as above in Yellow Iris for one example). I much enjoy the recent reworking of the Miss Marple stories where she is shoe-horned into other people's adventures in a completely seamless way. After all, Joan Hickson said all there was to say about the original character as written, and these newer stories are exploring ways to add something. But... the Poirot alterations have not been so good; David Suchet has yet to complete his definitive TV adaptations of the canon - so it's not the time to fiddle about with the plots to such a degree. Sadly, "Cards on the Table" was a particularly unworthy of his stated aims for the series - and, now it's done he will have no opportunity to "correct" it.
Posted by Christina at 8:58 AM. Category: Books of the Month
