And I think she knew (or had a premonition) that this would be her last book. Not only because of the title and opening quote -- I think it's also part of why she made it a T&T story. She'd wrapped up Poirot and Miss Marple decades earlier, even if the books weren't published when they were written, but T&T was the one series she still had to wrap up; and it was the one series where she'd (mostly) allowed her characters to age in real time. So I think that's how she saw it as well ... that it was fitting to finish with T&T matching her own advanced age.
I felt a bit of melancholy at the end of this book, too, but for all the flat ending this provides to Christie's stupendous writing career, I still have to say my sense of melancholy at the end of "Curtain" is vastly greater ... even if she wrote it much earlier than this one. Not sure why this is -- probably in part, at least, because Christie lives on in her books and I didn't actually have to witness her death as a person; whereas even though Poirot also lives on in her books, "Curtain" is where we actually do witness his death.
Curtain really took it out of me. I felt sad at the end Postern of Fate for very much the same reason - the sense of an ending, but Curtain really, really affected me. Maybe because the Poirot stories are my favourites but I guess it was also because when I read Curtain it was before I found BL, was stuck in a hotel room in a far-away place, and didn't have anyone to share the devastation with.
Oh man -- what a book to be stuck alone in a faraway place with. Can there possibly be a worse option? :(
I was alone, too, when I first read it, but I at least had my cats for insta-comfort ... and a bunch of DVDs displaying the little grey cells very much alive and at their sparkling best!
Yeah, it was not good. I was in either Dubai or Singapore and really couldn't turn up to the office the next morning asking my boss (at the time) for some emotional support to get a grip on a book hangover ... Although, in hindsight, he probably would have understood. I mean, we did end up being Greene reading buddies of a sort.
This book should definitely come with a big red warning sticker.
And I think she knew (or had a premonition) that this would be her last book. Not only because of the title and opening quote -- I think it's also part of why she made it a T&T story. She'd wrapped up Poirot and Miss Marple decades earlier, even if the books weren't published when they were written, but T&T was the one series she still had to wrap up; and it was the one series where she'd (mostly) allowed her characters to age in real time. So I think that's how she saw it as well ... that it was fitting to finish with T&T matching her own advanced age.
I felt a bit of melancholy at the end of this book, too, but for all the flat ending this provides to Christie's stupendous writing career, I still have to say my sense of melancholy at the end of "Curtain" is vastly greater ... even if she wrote it much earlier than this one. Not sure why this is -- probably in part, at least, because Christie lives on in her books and I didn't actually have to witness her death as a person; whereas even though Poirot also lives on in her books, "Curtain" is where we actually do witness his death.
I was alone, too, when I first read it, but I at least had my cats for insta-comfort ... and a bunch of DVDs displaying the little grey cells very much alive and at their sparkling best!
This book should definitely come with a big red warning sticker.
I love the fact of you and your boss being reading buddies (if only "of sorts") ...