Chapter 1: What is the significance of Agatha Christie's pseudonym Mary Westmacott?
Thank you.
Hello and welcome to Westmopod, the Christie Time podcast about Agatha Christie's secret identity.
Chapter 2: How does Giant's Bread reflect autobiographical elements of Agatha Christie?
I'm Mark Aldridge. I read and write about Agatha Christie a lot, including for my books, Agatha Christie's Marple, Agatha Christie's Poirot, and excitingly, the forthcoming The Swinging Christie's Agatha Christie in the 1960s, which is co-written with... Hello, Grey Robert Brown here. I'm a writer and a Christie fan and a Westmacott fan.
And I'm raring to go because this is book one, episode one, Giant Spread. Yes. Yes. This is something that we've been thinking about for a really long time. This felt really irresistible, didn't it? And also, not only has it been a long time coming conceptually, but a long time coming. I mean, Pete behind the curtain didn't listen up.
When did we record the... We recorded the intro episode about eight months ago or something, didn't we? It was a long time ago. That was because we were so excited. I think, and I've said this, I say this in the introduction episode as well, and this, if anyone hasn't caught it, it dropped a fortnight ago, so it should be on your feeds.
But with The Swinging Christies, we came with a very set idea of what we wanted to talk about. Whereas with Westmorepob, we've decided to let Mary Westmacott show us what the path is. So I particularly wanted to, you were rereading it various times for other projects, but I wanted to particularly make sure that I'd recorded that episode before going back and reading any of them. Yeah.
And also to keep it kind of fresh in our minds. Yes. Yeah, it's very exciting. It is, yeah. It's been great to reread so many times, actually, because I've ended up, I think this is my third reading of Giant's Bread in two years. You know, it's funny how often it comes around. More than ever before, that must be.
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Chapter 3: What is the structure of Giant's Bread and how does it differ from Christie's typical style?
Certainly more than ever before. Yeah, yeah. My appreciation's only getting higher every time. Same, I think. Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's crack on. Giant's Bread is the story of Vernon Dare, a naive but ambitious young man who wants nothing more than to reconcile himself with the house he grew up in, Abbots Poussin. His childhood hatred of music becomes an adult obsession.
We follow Vernon along with his friends Sebastian Levin, Josephine Waite and Nell Verica as they come of age and navigate family, love, money, loss, until the coming of war changes everything. Is Vernon truly a genius? And will he ever make the music to prove that? And we should clarify, actually, that because in the intro episode, as we said, we recorded a while ago.
I think we mentioned that it's such a shame that there's been a checkered history in the US in terms of availability of these books, because we have a lot of US listeners.
Chapter 4: What themes of music and genius are explored in Giant's Bread?
Hi. Hi, if you're listening. That's no longer the case. No, no. They've been slowly re-released in e-book and then paperback. But that's really good timing. Thank you very much. So I think by the time I think I'm right in saying by the time this drops, they'll all be out. They will. So, yeah. Yeah.
Chapter 5: How do emotions and relationships shape the characters in Giant's Bread?
But they're coming now at time of recording. So let's talk a little about the context of Giant Spread. In fact, it was published on the 14th of April, which is today. There is method to our madness, isn't there, Mark? Annoyingly, it's 96 years ago. Let's say it's almost 100 years ago. People said that to me about my Marvel book. They were like, oh, what's that celebrating the centenary of?
It's not.
Chapter 6: What role does faith and antisemitism play in Giant's Bread?
I'm not going to keep it back for a couple of years just because that would match 100 years nicely. Yeah, maybe we should have held it. We'll re-release with bonus features. Exactly. That's the way it's done this century. Although that does bring me to thinking this book does not feel like 100 years old. And that is a real point in its favour, actually.
That's a really quite startling reminder, actually. So we know Mary Westmacott is Agatha Christie, although we will be questioning her identity in other more abstract ways as the series goes on. What does she stand for as Mary Westmacott? Why did she choose to write under a pseudonym? Why did she choose to write separate novels? There are a few reasons for that.
Chapter 7: What recommendations are made for readers who enjoyed Giant's Bread?
I think that she was already starting to feel a little bit hemmed in by expectations of what an Agatha Christie would be. Well, she said later to Julian Simmons in the 60s, which ties in nicely with our other podcast, that she liked... I know, I keep finding things that are 60s related.
Chapter 8: What are the key insights about Mary Westmacott's identity revealed in this episode?
In fact, there's some bits later on in the episode where I want to talk about 60s things. It's like we can't escape. It'll always have a special place in our heart. But she said that, I think it is better to keep the two sorts of books separate. I like keeping them to myself too, so that I can write exactly what I like. She does send a copy of Giant's Bread to Max in 1930.
So they're not quite married yet. So we're saying in the first episode, in the introduction episode, I should say, about the fact that these were written after she and Archie were no more. But she hasn't quite married Max at this point either. So we're slightly in sort of limbo in terms of her sort of name. Yes.
But she's still very much in the sort of, you know, throes of love, early love, young love, when she's writing these lovely letters to Max in 1930. But backtrack. So she wants to keep the book separate. Yes. They're a different mode of writing. Yes. They've historically been massively kind of misunderstood and mislabeled and misattributed as a result of this, right? Yeah.
Especially in the republications in the 60s, where they would often say that they were romances. And if you look at lots of those covers, they are almost all of couples and sort of exchanging flowers and stuff like that. It's not that you couldn't say that there isn't a moment of love in all of these Westmacots, but you can't say that they are romance novels. No, I mean, a lot of the love...
that's primarily on display are not romantic relationships. I mean, this book in a huge way is about friendship. A Daughter's a Daughter is funnily enough, in many ways, not that romantic and in many ways about a mother and daughter, which we'll come onto in a few weeks.
Yeah, and then I think there's been a bit of a pushback against that to define them as, well, at one point it seemed quite popular to call them like emotional thrillers or like psychological thrillers, which I also think is not true. I always call them sort of character dramas, but I mean, then you're just sort of talking literary novels. I think that's it.
Yeah, we've talked about this before, haven't we? I think as soon as you start going, or you define them by their characters or their emotions, well, that is just a literary novel. That's just a novel. And actually, maybe our obsession, not ours, but the world's obsession with trying to categorise writing in this way is just completely arbitrary. It is.
And I think especially because of Agatha, that you would go, well, she's a genre writer. What genre is this? Where can we put this? And quite clearly say you're trying a different genre. In fact, I noted only on page 171 of my copy is when I felt like the romance plot actually kicks in. It's about the point that usually you're wrapping up an Agatha Christie novel. Exactly, that's true.
But that means there's 170 pages before that, before you even get to what these books have been sort of pegged as in some course. And I can't believe anything other than siphoning them off as romance novels or calling them things like emotional is on some level dismissive, dare I say low-key misogynistic, and just trying to kind of make them seem lesser than the sophisticated books that they are.
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