Words on Wednesday: Agatha Christie's First "Professional" Novel

  Christie will put surprising autobiographical references into her novels. 
  She surfed a bit in the 1920s.  This is referenced
in The Man in the Brown Suit, in which her heroine, arrived in South Africa, does a weird, fun thing in the ocean with boards. No mention of surfing, but if you aren't skimming at this point, it's obvious.
  Murder in Mesopotamia and They Came to Baghdad show the reactions of two young women to their first visit to the East.  Nurse Leatheran, in the earlier Murder in Mesopotamia, is a competant nurse: This is a very unhiegenic place! Her heroine in They Came to Baghdad moves quickly through this reaction, and becomes fascinated by the archaeological dig, especially its everyday pottery.  These may well summarize Christie's own reactions as she became more familiar with the East and life on a dig.

The Blue Train

is earlier than the other two.  Christie was new to travel at this point, and at a crossroads of her life. She reflects this in several of her main characters, men as well as women.

 https://knowingchristie.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/notes-on-the-mystery-of-the-blue-train/

 

  i find fascinating parallels with Christie's own life.  Ruth Kettering, facing divorce after ten years' of marriage.  New travel horizons.  Did the death of her divorcing character reflect Christie's own depression at the dissolution of her marriage?  
  While the third woman referred to above, Mirelle the dancer, doesn't intrigue me so much, Katherine Grey is one of my favorite Christie characters.  She is a listener.  She deals kindly and sensibly with everyone she meets.  i love her meditations on the time of her life.  In her early 30s, she considers the "springtime" of her life vanished without being experienced.  She finds significance in the color name of one of the coutoure dresses she buys, soupir d'automne, "sigh of autumn."
  Is it significant that Katherine was a companion for ten years, as Ruth Kettering and Christie herself were married for ten years?

A Difficult Book to Write, Vanished from her Memory

  The book was written during the difficult period of her life when she learned her husband was in love with another woman and wanted out of the marriage.  The famous "disappearance" took place at this time.  And the divorce became final only a few short months after the book's publication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie#Disappearance:_1926

   Perhaps the novel ran too close to some of the worst memories of her life.

https://www.agathachristie.com/about-christie

https://knowingchristie.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/notes-on-murder-in-mesopotamia/
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Came_to_Baghdad
 https://knowingchristie.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/notes-on-they-came-to-baghdad/