Lena’s Reviews > The Christie Affair > Status Update

This story told from the perspective of Nan Oday, the mistress of Archie Christie, Agatha Christie’s husband. Essentially this book starts out introducing Nan, and basically painting the picture that Agatha was aware of her husband’s in discretion, and painted Archie has a really cold and non-compassionate husband.

The chapters essentially go back-and-forth between Agatha‘s disappearance, as well as Nan‘s younger life. She was one of three daughters in England, but her father was Irish, and her mother was Eng. Every summer she would go to her uncles farm in Ireland to help out around the farm, and there she fell in love with a guy named Finnbar. They would fall in love and eventually she became pregnant with his baby. She went back to England after finding out that her eldest sister had killed herself by jumping into the river Thames. She then goes back to Ireland to be with Finnbar, only to discover that he was extremely sick with influenza. Finnbar’s father takes her to a convent for unwed pregnant girls.

This convent is awful and they basically have the pregnant women work relentlessly all day. And the priest was sexually abusing Nan‘s friend best. After having the baby, one of the nuns be friends Nan and helps her to take care of her, giving her extra time with the baby that is normally allowed the mothers. Then one day Nan goes to work and comes back, and the baby had been adopted to an older gentleman. Nana’s heartbroken and she manages to escape the convent and runs into a lesbian couple that helps her to go from Ireland back to England. She reconnected with her family and is determined to find her daughter that was adopted to someone.

As mentioned, the chapters go back-and-forth between describing Nan‘s past, and the present time where Agatha was missing. A giant manhunt was underway to find her. In summary, what happened is that after Archie tells Agatha that he is ending their marriage, she essentially has a mental breakdown and drives away. Her car Corine’s off the road at which point Finnbar finds her and basically says we can devise a plan so that you can keep Archie and I can take back Nan. They basically escape off together and develop a really deep friendship. During the course of this Nan just so happen to be on vacation, the same place where Finnbar and Agatha were hiding. Essentially, what happens is Nan and Finnbar hook up and reconnect, and Agatha Falls in love with the police officer that was tasked with finding her in this city.

The book very slowly describes day by day, her disappearance, but at the very end, one of the librarians in the city library identifies Agatha from her photo and let the police know. So the police go to the hotel, where Agatha happens to be with the police officer she’s in love with, Chilton. Archie goes with them and basically he takes Agatha back. Agatha leaves Chilton a note in the room basically saying, please go get my typewriter from the mansion where we were hiding. She didn’t say anything else in this letter.

Then, at the very end, we are informed that Agatha and Archie were together for only a short period of time because Agatha was no longer wanting to be with him after her adventure, so they break up. Archie would marry Nan and they would have a daughter. One thing I forgot to mention is that the reason that Nan targeted Archie is because she believed that he was the one that took her baby that she was forced to give up away from her. So she felt a connection with Agatha and Archie‘s daughter named Teddy. So she specifically needed to marry him so that she could stay in Teddy‘s life. She would then become Teddy’s stepmother and they would be very close. At the very end of the book Agatha takes Teddy and saying that she’s going back to her family’s home, but ends up, stopping at Chilton’s house and reconnect with him. Based on what’s alluded to by the narrator Nan, they wouldn’t stay together, but they did reconnect for that period of time.

Again, as mentioned, I wanted to like this book so badly because I love Agatha Krysty, and she’s my favorite author, but I found the plot to be an extremely slow burn to the point where I actually found it dull. I was listening to my audiobook at 1.75 times speed just to be able to get through it. The book could’ve benefited by being a lot shorter, and perhaps, including a few more interesting plot features.

A part of this book was very heartwarming, because I gave insight into Agatha Christie’s life. Overall, I may recommend if somebody really loves this author, otherwise I did find it extremely dull.