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+---- Thread: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (/showthread.php?tid=2117)
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - Odira Keene - August 2, 2018
I thought this thread existed already but it doesn’t and I have feelings
And Then There Were None
Ten people. One island. Bodies piling up. Sounds like a party! From goodreads:
First, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. And only the dead are above suspicion.
This is a Christie novel without a detective, which I didn't know was a thing so that's a bonus!
This is a discussion thread for people who have read or are reading the book in question. With that in mind, there are likely to be spoilers throughout. However, in the event of major twists or “how it ends”, please wrap content in spoiler tags.
Code:
[spoiler]Surprise!content here[/spoiler]
RE: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - Aldous Crouch - August 2, 2018
This is my first Agatha Christie novel—I’ve done movies and mini series in the past, but never read her. I AM IN LOVE. Currently on the second body and I can’t even guess at what’s going on, which is my kind of mystery ?
Philip Lombard is what would happen if I had a baby with a sociopath
FUN FACT: my copy advertises the previous title as a “previously published as” which is problematic BUT NOT THE ORIGINAL TRLE WHICH I DONT UNDERSTAND IT EVER BEING. PUBLISHED AS #modern sensibilities
RE: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - Elias Grimstone - August 2, 2018
I should really read this one even though I'm not doing the challenge because THE BBC MINISERIES OF THIS MADE MY LIFE. (There is a theme here and it is: all my favourite BBC specials aaah.)
/general psa to watch it if you haven't
RE: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - Aldous Crouch - August 2, 2018
I WILL BE WATCHING THIS WEEKEND.
Also I started this morning and am 225/300 pages in, soooo guess what I'm not sleeping until I finish?
With that in mind, a brief foray into theory for
Four little soldier boys going out to sea
A red herring swallowed one, and then there were three
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I don't know if I think it will actually HAPPEN, but it would be fab if the most obvious candidate (at this point, Lombard IMO but it could change in the interim) was actually driven to kill one of the other three, but was not the orchestrator of the entire affair. Would TRULY speak to the concept of "red herring"!
RE: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - Constance Sykes - August 2, 2018
Okay so this book is my everything. I’ll keep my thoughts to myself till Kayte has finished and nothing is a spoiler!
Also the BBC adaptation is brilliant and, I think, is the only adaptation that has ever kept the original ending...
Also also I have a copy with the original title (it was Nan’s) and it’s facsimile is 1968 which doesn’t seem remotely old enough.
RE: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - Aldous Crouch - August 2, 2018
(August 2, 2018 – 8:15 AM)Constance Sykes Wrote: Also also I have a copy with the original title (it was Nan’s) and it’s facsimile is 1968 which doesn’t seem remotely old enough.
I kind of want it just for the WTF factor xP
ALSO THIS BOOK WAS STELLAR. I will leave the rest of my thoughts in spoiler tags so that I can live without fear.
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Okay so I did love this book, but I found Vera's death to be, to pull a word from the book, incredible (in the bad way). I know tensions had run high etc etc, but I just can't buy that someone who was all "HELLS YEAH I LIVED GONNA GO HOME BITCHES" would minutes (pages) later just casually hang herself because the stuff was already there.
HOLY HELL THE KILLER THO. Did not see that coming.
Also did this book inspire Dexter 'cause Wargrave seems like Dexter ;P
A tale of fault: Wargrave's letter said he killed Anthony and Mrs. Rogers first because they were the least culpable, however I disagree. I think Ms. Brent had no intention of killing that girl—it was entirely Beatrice's* own doing and not actually a forseeable consequence, SO. Also, Anthony had shown zero remorse and was plainly a risk of doing it again, so I think their positions ought to have been switched.
QUICK Q: at the beginning-ish of the book it made it clear that Armstrong didn't drink anymore since that was an issue for him, but Brent was specifically the only one who took water over alcohol after the gramophone incident, and then for the rest of the book it talked about EVERYONE having drinks. Do you think this was change for Armstrong and affected his behaviour/usefulness in the rest of the book, or was this merely one of those period things that we don't necessarily understand and he's fine if he's not binge drinking gin in a closet?
* Beatrice: preferred name for girls who are lead astray in fiction and on Charming lol
RE: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - Constance Sykes - August 2, 2018
I tend to think that Armstrong’s drinking is partly an indicator of his increasingly frayed mental state but also because Agatha Christie was a bit of a twee middle class lady so alcoholism was politely ignored and/or tolerated as long as nobody made a scene!
(I’ll send you a pic of the book later :p)
RE: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - Ursula Black - August 2, 2018
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas I was starting to think no one else was going to read this for the challenge! I've read a collection of Miss Marple short stories before so this wasn't my first Agatha Christie read but it was my first novel of hers. I enjoyed it, it was definitely an easy read and despite having seen that BBC adaptation when it aired a year or so ago I couldn't actually remember much of what happened besides people stuck on an island dying.
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So I'm sort of in agreementish about Vera's death but I was definitely WTFing before I read the epilogue bit. However, I can understand it after thinking about it a bit more. She thought she'd survived and the killer was dead, the ordeal was over she just had to wait for a boat off the island, but then she goes to her room and oh shit how could Lombard have done that when she was with him? She's the only person left and the noose and chair were sitting there all suggestively and meanwhile she may still be hunted by an omnipresent invisible killer, she's all alone, and she's already been paranoid and freaked out for several days. The only way to guarantee escape from further psychological torture was to kill herself, I think she was too hysterical and mentally exhausted to consider enduring more of it especially on her own in a house full of corpses.
I did feel that Marston should've been later, but I keep having to remind myself that the order of death was decided by the judge who was arguably a sociopath. Marston might've killed again but not intentionally, unlike most of the others he didn't decide to kill anyone. Emily Brent didn't exactly decide to kill anyone either but she had to have known that a lot of women in that position kill themselves and if she was the devout and pious Christian she claimed to be then she would have done something so I think it was her sanctimonious hypocrisy that separated her from Marston. Armstrong should probably have died first because his was also an accident and one he felt bad about but he was needed by the judge in order to pull off later murders.
RE: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - Aldous Crouch - August 3, 2018
On the last:
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I still don't quite buy her hanging herself >.> Also, did she, or did she just do most of the work? I know the police noted that the chair was put away. Did Wargrave do that after she hanged herself but before he killed himself, or was he present to help her the rest of the way?
RE: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - Elladora Black - August 4, 2018
SO THIS IS MY JAM YO
I've read stacks of other Agatha Christie's but this one is still my favourite for a variety of reasons. Just going to spoiler tag everything just in case!
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I love the lack of detective. It adds such an element of discontent and urgency to proceedings because there's no avuncular presence to swoop in and make everything safe again by unmasking the killer. If you liked this you should try Ordeal by Innocence for a similar sort of set up.
The nature of guilt and past transgressions is a big thing in Christie but ATTWN is the one that sort of takes it to its logical conclusion of what somebody would do with that if they were a judge and accustomed to punishing people.
It's essentially a middle-class English version of a slasher film where all the teenagers are being bumped off which I find hilarious. "Oh no, what's that noise, we should split up and investigate...oh fuck he's dead."
In terms of the order of death I think that Marsden makes sense being early because he didn't actually intend to kill anybody but Mrs R, being an accomplice at best, should probably have gone before him. On the other hand its a bit more dramatic from a narrative perspective to have the young, fit man be the first to die, and to die quite dramatically, as opposed to the boring middle-aged woman that sort-of dies in her sleep. So maybe that's just a storytelling device? Or maybe Wargrave was just banking on being able to off her in the kerfuffle after Marsden's death?
The other option, and I've been thinking a lot about this, is that Wargrave is punishing people who've killed but also people who have disrupted the right order of things. So going to the other end of the ten Vera has killed one person as opposed to Lombard killing twenty, but because hers was a child and she's a woman its inherently a worst thing in the eyes of Wargrave and disrupts the natural order of things: women being protectors of children, etc, etc. So I was thinking maybe Mrs R is worse than Marsden because, as a servant and a boo hiss social inferior, its inherently wrong of her to have had any part in offing her mistress?
Which still doesn't explain why Miss Brent telling her serving wench to fuck off out her house constitutes her killing the girl but w/e. I embrace the hypocrites, leave me be.
As for Vera's hanging at the end I think it's just supposed to be her acknowledgement that she escaped the noose once and this time there is no escape? She's literally the only one left with all the bodies so chances are when the authorities arrive homegirl is going to jail at best but, more likely, would be hanged anyway so might as well?
