Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thank you.
Hello and welcome to Westmopod, the Christy Time podcast about Agatha Christie's secret identity. I'm Mark Aldridge. I research and write about Agatha Christie a lot, including for my books about Marple and Poirot and the forthcoming The Swinging Christie's book, co-written with...
Me, I'm Grey Robert Brown and I'm a writer and a Christie fan and a Westmacott fan and this is episode two, book two, Unfinished Portrait. Hi.
Chapter 2: What insights does 'Unfinished Portrait' provide about Agatha Christie?
Hello, how are you? I'm okay, I'm dry, which is good as we're recording this during a storm. So we're in Tenerife. We are in Tenerife, Puerto de la Cruz.
And we recorded, you'll have already heard, dear listener, our other episode that we've recorded here, which was for the Swinging Christies. It's over on that feed.
Chapter 3: How does the context of 'Unfinished Portrait' influence its themes?
Echoes of the Disappearance.
Yes, yes. But there is more to say about Tenerife than just that. So we knew there was something else that we wanted to cover while we were here, while we're soaking in the atmosphere.
So obviously you've been coming to the Tenerife Festival for several years now. This is my first time, excitingly. Had you been to Tenerife as a kid? No, never.
Chapter 4: What is the structure of 'Unfinished Portrait' and why is it significant?
On holiday?
We used to go to a few places. If we had the money, we went to Portugal, to the Algarve. We went there two or three times. But the only time I'd been to Spain before I came to Tenerife was we went to Mallorca once, which is quite different to certainly the north part of Tenerife.
Do you know what? I have never been to Majorca, but one of my best friends, friend of the podcast, Carla, Carla is from Majorca, and I'm constantly saying she should invite me to go there, and she hasn't yet. But this is relevant because Carla was one of your students. Carla's the one that did your, I think, the MA? Yeah, Mike Wallivan.
Chapter 5: What autobiographical elements are present in 'Unfinished Portrait'?
Yeah, yeah, years ago, like before we knew each other. So hi, Carla, if you're listening. Hi, Carla. It's not a spoiler to say up top that the whole kind of framing device of this book is... is set in, well, it's not actually explicitly called out as Tenerife, is it?
No.
But it quite clearly is.
Yes. If you know that Agatha Christie's been to Tenerife and she's written this, then it clearly is. It's an unnamed island, which is referred to as Spanish as well.
Yeah. Same in Man from the Sea, I think, isn't it? The short story. I think you're right. I think, again, she definitely says, well, she definitely says island. I think she says Spanish. I'm fairly certain she doesn't specify Tenerife.
Yeah, I think so. There was something somewhere that was just like exotic. But yeah, clearly, I mean, we went to the Man from the Sea house the other day. We did, we did. And literally, you know, the Cyprus lined road or down to the sea were absolutely there.
Indisputable, yeah. And indeed, it's a beautiful passage or couple of passages where Christie evokes Tenerife at the start and end of this book. And yeah, you don't have to walk far in this place to see Tenerife. views that feel very much like the views that she was looking at. I pulled out a quote where she says, I'm not going into details. This isn't a chronicle of such things.
There's no need to describe the quaint little Spanish town or the meal we had together at her hotel, her being Celia, the main character, or the way I had my luggage secretly conveyed from my hotel to the one she was staying at.
and i thought you know what i always think of is that description or lack of description in chimneys when she says or the narrator says well i'm not going to describe chimneys because you can find it you can find you can look it up yeah and i sort of love that brazenness of going there's no need to describe this you know it you can go you can go visit and i get that that's exactly what we've done
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Chapter 6: How does art and artistry play a role in 'Unfinished Portrait'?
Very welcome to. I just thought I'd flag up before we got into the book itself that when I came to the festival here a few years ago, I did put a little press cutting up. which Anna, who arranges the festival here, she absolutely loved and asked me to send it to her because it was an explicit reference to what she'd been doing. So this is from the Manchester Guardian on the 28th of April, 1927.
And it says, detective stories are a favourite form of fiction. And the authors who reach the public through Mrs. Collins are noted for their skill. Mrs. Agatha Christie, for instance, has made Monsieur Poirot one of the famous detectives of the world. His fight against the Big Four is a thrilling story. So this is advertising the Big Four, which has just come out.
The publishers hope to receive Mrs. Christie's manuscript for her next novel, The Mystery of the Blue Train, very soon. Mrs. Christie has been recuperating in the Canary Islands after her recent illness.
Chapter 7: What is the character of Dermot and how does he impact Celia?
So that thing about having to address it, the fact that everybody knows that she's had this breakdown or something has happened that's been huge in her life, and clearly there was a lot of publicity about it, but it's not ignoring it, but it's drawing a veil over it as well and saying, she's getting better. And indeed, that is why she came to the Canary Islands.
That's why she came to Tenerife, was to recuperate and to do a little bit of work. But it was about recuperation, which, you know, in early 1927. So, yeah, I just thought it was nice to give that bit of context. She didn't, as far as we know, write Unfinished Portrait here. And indeed, she can't have really, because the autobiographical elements of the stories go later than 1927. Yeah.
But clearly it is remembering it when she does come to write it.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm not surprised that Anna was thrilled to see the words Mrs. Christie and Canary Islands in the same sentence. It's like, yes, this is exactly what they've built this brilliant festival on. So yeah, let's get into it.
Chapter 8: What recommendations do the hosts suggest for readers who enjoyed 'Unfinished Portrait'?
Yeah. Unfinished Portrait is the story of Celia, a woman who is staying on an unnamed Spanish island where she meets a man called Larrabee who is an artist. Larrabee realises that Celia is on the verge of suicide and implores her to tell him more about herself. Celia's story reveals a past of love, betrayal and fear which have all led her to this point.
I think I asked you the other night, do you think this is the most popular Mary West McCott?
Well, I think it's the most famous Mary West McCott. But inspired by that, I had to look on Goodreads to see how they rate it. Now, these obviously are not our personal ratings, but there are thousands of people that have averaged out.
It's interesting to see that far and away the most ratings are given to, in terms of number of ratings, Absent in the Spring, which has over 15,000 ratings, and the rest are all under 5,000. Oh, wow.
So it's a big difference. Oh, mind you, I think I might know why that is, but we will leave it for that episode.
So that also got the highest rating, the highest average rating of 4.14 stars. So that's at the top.
And then the next one is Giant's Bread. Right. And try and work out the order that something is published in and maybe that was incomplete and all the rest of it. Nowadays, so many people will go to platforms like that and go, oh, that's the first one. So I'll start with that one.
So yeah, I'm not surprised that Giant's Bread is read more than perhaps its reputation would belie just because it's...
but it's also the second highest rated so it's almost like sometimes the more ratings you have actually your average can go down and that's a compliment to Absinthe in the spring as well the fact that could quite easily have dragged down the numbers exactly
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