Sunday Seconds

Sunday Seconds -- there are books that I would really love to re-read -- if I could make the time. Sometimes books have profound impacts on one's reading experience. Sometimes you just know these books could be even greater if you could go back and read them with again better understanding and life experiences under your belt. Sometimes books don't hold up the memory the second time around -- that's the risk. Sunday Seconds will be a cataloging of that kind of wish list.

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AND THEN THERE WERE NONE by Agatha Christie

The very first Agatha Christie I read was her last published, CURTAIN, read in high school on a night of babysitting. Reading the last one first -- with it's twist ending -- was a trip but it got me back on the path of mysteries. However, AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, or TEN LITTLE INDIANS, I think is one of her better stories. With this book, I wish I could re-read it without knowing what was going to happen next or how it ended; reading it for the first time, again.

In the novel, ten people, who have previously been complicit in the deaths of others but have escaped notice or punishment, are tricked into coming onto an island. Even though the guests are the only people on the island, they are all mysteriously murdered one by one, in a manner paralleling, inexorably and sometimes grotesquely, the old nursery rhyme, "Ten Little Indians".

Dame Agatha makes a jarring departure in this grim and intricate tale. There is no sleuth, the pace is fast, frenzied and breathless, and rather than "types," she takes pains with characterizations. The body count is high, and the mode of death frequently untidy. They include a doctor, a games mistress, a soldier of fortune, a rich playboy, a retired policeman, a judge, a spinster, a retired general and a married couple who are to be the servants. They arrive on a bleak rocky island to a completely modern house with all the amenities. The fires are welcoming, there is an ample supply of food, the servants are impeccable, but their host is absent. In each of the bedrooms, the Ten Little Indians nursery rhyme is posted on a prominent wall. It begins:
"Ten Little Indian boys went out to dine; One choked his little self, and then there were nine."
Drinks are served, and one guest chokes, turns blue and falls over dead. The tension builds, the fright of the stranded people is palpable as one by one, they are picked off, each in accordance with the nursery rhyme. As the number of victims increase, the survivors' suspicions of each other reach a frantic pitch.

I stage managed this play in summer rep in 1988, I think it was. It was hell getting those little statues off stage, let me tell you. And every night it was like walking a tight rope because the actor who was the villain at the end of the play had these huge speeches of how he killed everyone and he famously had a bad memory so he stumbled through these speeches night after night. Ugh.

It is the unfolding of the story that is rich. Some people these days look down upon Christie. However, she was a master of the type of crime fiction she wrote -- her era wasn't really into great character development, it was the puzzle of the thing.

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We went to see RED last night. It was entertaining, not a movie to go for depth, but fun. Helen Mirren is just a goddess. She's one of my top three favorite actresses. Bruce Willis is just Bruce Willis and he's aging well. There is a scene, shown in the trailer, where he steps out of a moving car to shoot a bad guy. Impressive, and I want to see that scene again and again. Based on a graphic novel, this is a funny, shoot-em-up/explosions, the good guys versus bad guys movie.

It's a lovely, gloomy, overcast day. If I didn't have so much to do, it would be a great napping day (heck, I may nap anyway). Otherwise, I'll be at my office computer and changing laundry loads with the Steeler game on the tv.

Much love,

PK the Bookeemonster