Immagine dell'autore.

Nina de Gramont

Autore di The Christie Affair

8 opere 1,627 membri 143 recensioni

Sull'Autore

Nina De Gramont teaches fiction at the Harvard Extension School. She lives on Cape Cod with her husband, the writer David Gessner. (Bowker Author Biography)
Fonte dell'immagine: ninadegramont.com

Opere di Nina de Gramont

The Christie Affair (2022) 871 copie
Gossip of the Starlings (2008) 244 copie
The Last September (2015) 163 copie
Of Cats and Men: Stories (2001) 73 copie
Meet Me at the River (2013) 48 copie
The Boy I Love (1750) 29 copie

Etichette

Informazioni generali

Utenti

Recensioni

"We both know you can't tell your own story without exposing someone else's."

In London, a renowned mystery author goes missing for 11 days in December 1926 after an argument with her unfaithful husband, Archibald Christie. This novel is the author's envisioning of the mysterious unresolved event. The story is narrated in the first person who happens to be Nan but alternating timelines from her youth to where she is now, blatantly flaunting herself in the Christie home as an assistance to Archie. His dalliances were not exactly a well-kept secret so when he told her he was spending the weekend away, Agatha had no disillusions that he would be with Miss Nan O'Dea.

Mrs. Christie's disappearance remains up to debate as to what occurred although she was eventually "found" at a day spa hotel not too far from home. The rumors ranged from her having dementia, amnesia, pulling a publicity stunt to wanting to harm herself. The ribbon which ties the story together in this case is Nan O'Dea and how she came to be in the circle of the elite. Her background is filled with as much mystique and mystery as those of the Christie's. It is obvious that Nan both admired and loathed Agatha for her success and marriage to Archie.

"Agatha Christie had a fascination with murder. But she was tenderhearted. She never wanted to kill anyone. Not for a moment. Not even me."

This is Nan's story of ambition and desire to climb over other people in order to obtain her rags to riches ending.
… (altro)
 
Segnalato
marquis784 | 52 altre recensioni | Feb 28, 2024 |
Book on CD performed by Lucy Scott
3.5***

On December 3, 1926, Agatha Christie drove away from her home after an argument with her husband. Her car was found at the edge of a chalk pit, and it was feared she had drowned herself. A nation-wide (perhaps international) search began for her. She was found eleven days later, claiming to have no memory of the time she spent away from home. All this is true. In this fascinating novel, Nina de Gramont imagines what happened to Mrs Christie during that time period.

This is a novel about marriage, about motherhood, about love, about grief, about how society punishes those who fail to follow the rules, about forgiveness and justice.

De Gramont took the story in a direction I wasn’t expecting, and at first, I was unhappy about the focus being NOT on Agatha Christie’s disappearance, but on her husband’s mistress. But eventually the stories of these two women merge in an unexpected fashion that fascinated me.

Lucy Scott does a marvelous job of narrating this audiobook. I was sometimes confused about who was speaking, especially at the beginning, until I recognized the author’s choice of first-person narrator. But that is not Scott’s fault.
… (altro)
½
 
Segnalato
BookConcierge | 52 altre recensioni | Jan 30, 2024 |
I started THE CHRISTIE AFFAIR with the wrong expectation. I expected this to be a reimagining of Agatha Christie's 11 days when she went missing. While that's true, THE CHRISTIE AFFAIR is even more about Christie's first husband's mistress, Nan. She is really the main character, and she tells the story that is so full of thrilling twists and turns, I enjoyed it more than I ever enjoyed an Agatha Christie novel.

Christie's first husband is spoiled and selfish and wants to dump her in favor of Nan. So your immediate impression of Nan isn't meant to be a good one. However, that will soon change with her story of hardship and romance with an Irish boy/man.

And then there are all the secrets. Four people, including Christie, know what really happened during those 11 days. But everyone keeps her secret because she is keeping their secrets of murder and deception.

As Nan also tells it, Christie, too, has a romance during her 11 missing days. Are her and Nan's romances doomed, or can Nan rewrite the ending?

NOTE: Several other reviews of this book complain that Nan couldn't possibly have known everything she wrote about what happened during the 11 days.This may be their reading comprehension. Nan says more than once that she IMAGINES much of what happened based on what the others told her.
… (altro)
 
Segnalato
techeditor | 52 altre recensioni | Dec 16, 2023 |
My book club read this book for October 2023. We meet today to discuss it. I'm sure we'll have a lively discussion.

I'm sure the ten day disappearance of Agatha Christie in the 1920s is not news to anyone who reads. Although Christie became a prolific writer of murder mysteries and her books continue to be read and made into films and TV series and plays, she was just at the start of her career when she disappeared in December 1926. As in this book, the disappearance was triggered by her husband Archie asking for a divorce so he could marry his mistress. From that juncture on this book is pure fiction. In the book Agatha is stopped by a young Irishman as she drives away from her home. He is Finbarr Mahoney and he was the lover of Nan O'Dea, Archie Christie's mistress. At the end of World War I Nan got pregnant with Finbarr's child and went to Ireland to tell him, expecting they would be wed. Instead, Finbarr was ill with the Spanish flu and his father took Nan to a Catholic home for unwed mothers. Finbarr never learned that Nan had come until she had the baby and, against her wishes, it was placed for adoption. Later when he found out he wanted Nan to emigrate to Australia with him but Nan was determined to find their child, a daughter she called Genevieve. Nan wrote to Finbarr in Australia to tell him she was marrying Archie Christie and he came to England determined to stop her. They all end up in Yorkshire where Nan has gone to a spa hotel for a short vacation. Agatha and Finbarr stay in a vacant home near the hotel and Finbarr makes contact with Nan. Agatha Christie's disappearance is big news and police across the country are searching for her. A recently retired detective, Chilton, is called back to service to check around the Harrogate area of Yorkshire. He is staying at the same hotel as Nan but, at first, he doesn't know the connection between her and the missing writer. He does manage to find Mrs. Christie but before he can convince her to return home she disappears again. Then two mysterious deaths at the hotel occur and Chilton is tasked to help determine if they are accidents or something else. Chilton is no Hercule Poirot but he does have a fine mind for noticing things and drawing conclusions. The truth about the deaths came as a huge surprise to me. Eventurally, Agatha returns home but soon separates from Archie and he marries Nan.

Nan's back story explains her motive for marrying Archie but it would be a massive spoiler if I went into that. Suffice it to say that I think she continued to love Finbarr but couldn't be with him. Agatha also remarried and it appears to have been happy although it isn't like the ending of this book. I was rather disappointed by that because I think Christie's real life with her archaeologist husband, Max Mallowan, who was much younger than she would have made an interesting epilogue.

I also found a few errors in the book (on one page Nan is sitting with a cup of tea but a few pages over at the same table she has a coffee cup) and that always detracts from a book, in my opinion. Another plot point that was never explained was how Finbarr knew where Nan was going. It would only have taken a sentence or two to say she put it in her letter or that he talked to someone at her office; I kept expecting that to be revealed and it never was. So, all in all, not a story up to the calibre of Dame Agatha Christie.
… (altro)
½
 
Segnalato
gypsysmom | 52 altre recensioni | Oct 25, 2023 |

Liste

Premi e riconoscimenti

Potrebbero anche piacerti

Autori correlati

Francine Prose Contributor
Elizabeth Larsen Contributor
Kate Majoy Contributor
Ashley Talley Contributor
Harriette E. Wimms Contributor
K.A.C. Contributor
Susan Ito Contributor
Deborah Mcdowell Contributor
Karen E. Bender Contributor
Jacquelyn Mitchard Contributor
Carolyn Ferrell Contributor
Sandy Hingston Contributor
Katherine Towler Contributor
Catherine Newman Contributor
Denise Gess Contributor
Sarah Messer Contributor
Ann Hood Contributor
Pam Houston Contributor
Stephanie Andersen Contributor

Statistiche

Opere
8
Utenti
1,627
Popolarità
#15,814
Voto
½ 3.7
Recensioni
143
ISBN
62
Lingue
6

Grafici & Tabelle