And Then There Were None (The Novel)
Review of the novel And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.
Published by Harper Collins on 6th November 1939.
Cost: 3’6 1965, £12.99 2015
ISBN 978-0-00-752530-0 (Facsimile Edition - 252 pages)
I recently reviewed the play of the same name, when it was performed by The Agatha Christie Theatre Company, in January 2015
The story was serialised in the UK in twenty-three parts in the Daily Express on 6th June to 1st July 1939, but first published as a novel in the UK on 6th November 1929. Please be aware that this review will contain spoilers for individuals new to the story.
The novel is having a revival in 2015 as it is the 76th anniversary year for the story. It started with the play being performed in Windsor, Berkshire, UK, in January and going on tour around the UK, finishing in Torquay, Devon, UK, on 20th September 2015 and will culminate with the BBC showing their own three-part production starting on Boxing day in December 2015. As the novel was being discussed in various circles at The International Agatha Christie Festival in September I felt it was time to revisit the novel and look at how Christie handles the difficult concept of delight of individuals to distraught individuals, as they come to terms with their unusual predicament.
This is an iconic story of a serial killer, picking off individuals one by one while stranded on an isolated island off the coast of Devon in the UK. The story is widely regarded as an Agatha Christie masterpiece. Inspired by an old-fashioned nursery rhyme, it was published two months after the start of WWII. Following the success of the book, it was soon turned into a play by Christie and has had no less than six film and TV adaptations.
At the start of the novel we discover that ten very different individuals have been invited to a luxury hotel, located on an island off the coast of Devon, each receiving a tailor-made invitation that was too good to refuse.
Vera Claythorn recalls:
“I’m frightfully thrilled at the prospect of seeing Soldier Island. There’s been such a lot about it in the papers. Is it really very fascinating?”
Later in her bedroom at the hotel she assesses her surroundings:
Over the mantelpiece of the fireplace was a big square parchment – a poem, in a gleaming chromium frame. She read it. It was the old nursery rhyme that she remembered from her childhood days.
Ten little soldier boys went to dine …
Dr Armstrong is the last of the ten individuals to arrive at the island and on his journey across from the mainland he found time to reflect:
“There was something magical about an island – the mere word suggested fantasy. You lost touch with the world – an island was a world of its own. A world perhaps, from which you might never return.”
In chapter two Christie introduces the guests as individuals, giving some background to the characters as they prepare for dinner and we learn that two of them seem to know of each other, but it is after the meal that the story takes a strange turn. The guests become aware of a small round table situated to one side of the room and on it are placed ten little china figures; they comment that each of their rooms have the nursery rhyme framed, hanging on the wall in the bedrooms...
At twenty minutes past nine a gramophone record plays, not music, but spoken words.‘... there was a silence, a replete silence. Into that silence came The Voice. Without warning, inhuman, penetrating …’
“Ladies and gentlemen! Silence please!”
Christie’s characters are suddenly startled and the reader can feel a change of tone in the story and notes a disturbing atmosphere within the hotel lounge.
“You are charged with the following indictments:
“Edward George Armstrong, that you did upon the 14th day of March 1925, cause the death of Lousia Mary Clees.
“Emily Caroline Brent, that upon the 5th of November, 1931, you were responsible for the death of Beatrice Taylor.”
Each of the ten individuals is charged with the death of one or more people. Unsettled, the ten individuals protest their innocence, however, after challenging questions from those in the room, they admit their part in the indictments.
Christie now changes the mood of the story and her characters; they have lost the delight at arriving at the luxury hotel and want to leave immediately. The urge to leave is heightened when one of the party is declared dead and they find one of the china figures broken. The remaining individuals become weary of each other and are unsure whether safety lies on being in their own or being part of a group. Over the next one hundred pages Christie kills off her characters, linking the method of murder to a verse of the Ten Little Soldier Boy’s nursery rhyme. All the characters are killed off-stage, she does not describe the gory scenes, leaving that to her reader’s imagination, but it is very clear how each individual has lost their life, ten very different methods.
Agatha Christie has set her reader, and her characters in the story, a puzzle to solve; she is at her best as she takes us along an intriguing tale. Just as her characters search for the murderer, the pace of the tale encourages the reader to race towards the conclusion in an attempt to find out who the murder is, having had to change their own thoughts as they progress through the story. An unsuspecting end to a black story.
Adaptations of this novel to film and plays have taken poetic license to change the ending for their audience. The location has also varied, but it remains a locked room scenario, there is only one possible solution.
This novel is Agatha Christie at her best, an estimate of 100 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide. It is an outstanding novel, and I have enjoyed reading again. A true Agatha Christie 'whodunit'. Rating: 5 stars
Dr James Sheppard
17 December 2015
