GDT Book Club: Halloween Party

[lee058]

Has anyone decided to do the leads for this?  Maybe we should just have an open forum every day.

[juliajones54]

Who nominated the book?

[lee058]

juliajones54, I voted for it but I wasn't the one who nominated it.

[sal]

I found a list of book group questions for it, so if no one else steps up, I guess I can pick some from there.

[lee058]

sal, Thank you! I still haven't reread the book, but will try to keep up.

[sal]

Getting this started early. We'll see if anyone shows up.

Most of these questions are probably going to come from a book group sheet I found, until we get to Friday. Ha! Then, my gloves come off. Telegraphing my opinion here a bit.

Monday: Have you have read Agatha Christie before? If you haven’t, was the book what you expected from the Queen of Crime? [added from Sal: even if you have read tons of Christie, was it what you expected based on past reads?]

[sal]

I have read a fair amount of Christie, and LOVE several of her books.

This one, no. I just thought it was boring, and I got annoyed with everyone victim blaming that child for being a liar. Not one of her best, or IMO, not even one of her middle of the pack books. I feel like she was phoning it in at this point.

[lee058]

sal, I LOVE Christie, but not this particular book. I thought parts of it were good, but there were too many flaws for me to like it. My copy says it was published in 1969, and I don't think Christie liked or understood what was happening in society at that time. She was so negative about young people, for one thing. She didn't like the way they acted, the way they dressed, the way they related to other people..... it was all too much, in my opinion.

I was hoping for something more like her earlier books, with a clear plot and lots of possible criminals.

Sorry to those who liked it a lot, but I was disappointed.

[bernelli]

I'm still reading this an plan to finish today/tonight! I've got about 28% left to read... I'll join in and participate. I don't want to get any spoilers, so I've not read any of the other posts YET. BBS!!

[bernelli]

This was not what I expected at all. The first half of the book has so many references to mental patients running amok...and mental patients being blamed for the murders.
It was driving me crazy so I researched just a little bit. in the '60's, the UK began closing asylums and forcing mental patients to go to regular hospitals for out-patient care.... I wonder if A.C. was in an angry snit when she wrote this story and was (preaching) proving a point that mental healthcare needed attention rather than shutting the doors on the mental patients.

Another thing I found irritating and surprised me was the callous attitude toward murdered kids.
The murdered girl was called a liar by everyone... even her siblings. The only person that was mourning her was her mother. I did not like how the kids were just soul-less pawns in this story.

I typically see Christie's characters as shallow, but this was a whole new level of shallow. I didn't care for that attitude toward kids at all.

....I wonder if she was in a really bad mood when she cranked this story out.

[sal]

Tuesday: This question sort of relates to comments both Lee and Bernelli have made already regarding Christie and the times this story was set in.

Some of the language is quite dated. For example, only a few paragraphs in we read a description of the women getting ready for the party:

They consisted for the most part of mothers, one or two competent spinsters; there were useful teenagers, boys of sixteen and seventeen climbing up ladders or standing on chairs to put decorations, pumpkins or vegetable marrows or brightly coloured witchballs at suitable elevation.

Did you find any wince-worthy passages? [and added by me: I'm thinking more tone here, and not just language, like the casual attitude toward child murder and the overall negativity towards young people]

[sal]

Where to start? The child victim-blaming was the worst part for me, but Lee's point re: Christie just not seeming to like young people in that day and age got old fast. I don't recall that so much with books set in earlier years, where it seemed to be snarky comments across age groups instead of this focused.

But this comment? "competent spinsters" Gah!!!!!

[lee058]

Where to start, indeed. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any specific comments that rankled more than others. As I said earlier, just the general tone of the book seemed so negative, especially compared to her usual works! I don't think she really liked any of her characters (other than Poirot and Ariadne Oliver). Usually, I get the feeling that she really cared about her characters and was interested to see what would happen to them. I didn't get that feeling as much with this book. Someone here made the comment that it seemed like she was "phoning it in." I don't know that I would go that far, as I did like some parts of the book, but basically large parts of it were jarring.

Later today, if I get a chance, I will try and look for specific phrases that bothered me. Right now, I'm thinking it was more the overall tone.

[bernelli]

I agree with everything lee058 said.

I felt like Christie was just angry when she wrote this book. It was negative and felt as though she was irritated throughout the entire book. The only time I didn't feel irritation from her was when she was talking about Poirot's shoes, and this was maybe the only time I felt her typical charm come through in the story.

[sal]

Day three (we've covered bits of this, but...):

What did you think of the plot line development? How credible did the author make the plot?
Did the plot take turns you did not expect, or did you find it predictable? Did you find it believable?

[sal]

I think she tried to make the young woman who had been claiming to be the sole inheritor of the will a red herring, but I somehow never bought it, and assumed from first mention she was going to show up dead later. The actual murderer, I didn't know right off, but wasn't horribly surprised, so maybe not totally predictable, but not one of her most baffling endings, either.

Overall, I just couldn't get too enthused about any of it, which isn't so much a predictability thing as just a "this plotline did not serve me" one.

[lee058]

sal, I agree with you. About the only thing that surprised me was the behavior of the two young men at the end. Yay them.

[bernelli]

Oh, yes, the behavior of the two young boys at the end did surprise me too! ...and then, is this terrible?, I wondered if she added those characters in later...or made them live together as the most unlikely roommates ever, just so they could swoop in and save the day?

I think the fact that I was skeptical of this plot is proof that I wasn't buying this story very deeply. But I didn't hate it. ...for a while I thought it might become the first A.C. that I actually figured out. But I was wrong..I still did not figure this one out.

I did not find the story believable because no one cared about the murdered little girl...that was SO not believable to me. The siblings responses were so ugly... NO ONE would behave that way. Even siblings that truly hated each other would have some type of emotional reaction. I just didn't find this believable at all, and felt so much negativity while reading it.

I'm surprised she wrote a book like this. I tried to find out what was going on in her life while she wrote this...but... no dice.

[sal]

Thursday: (bringing other books in today for comparison...)

What is the most important aspect of genre fiction (in this case, we'll keep it to mystery) for you – characterization, action, dialogue, setting, or something else? How does this book rate in each of these areas for you?

[sal]

I feel like I am more character driven on genre fiction in general than a lot of people, and even in SFF stuff I often gloss over the action-y bits to some extent. But I can't stand to read somewhere where I don't care about any of the characters, and I DID NOT CARE about these people. Except to be mad after the fact that everyone was badmouthing that child.

Even Ariadne seemed to just get "she's obsessed with eating apples" as character development. What the heck?

The setting in this one was also boring. And made moreso by the fact that I saw the so-called movie adaptation of it about a week before I read the book. But that's tomorrow's question.

So, for me:
Characters
Coherent/plausible plotline (which I consider slightly differently from "action" as it can be largely off-screen)
Then dialogue (this was stilted, even factoring in the times)
Then setting and true action are probably tied. They matter, but I can overlook them if everything else is good. Which it wasn't here. Sadly.

[bernelli]

This is such an interesting question. I'm sitting here trying to decide how I rate these aspects.

I have to start with how I decide what book to read next...I decide how I want to generally feel... is it breezy & mooshy (romance, Stephanie Plum, etc). Is it intense and edgy (suspense, mystery). Am I feeling nosey (memoir...I love those..I'm pretty nosey). Am I ready to dedicate solid time... (something deeper like a classic..a thinker-type book). ...I don't know what this means? Is that a plot driven category?

While I'm reading I want to like/know the characters. So my 2nd must be characterization.

I'm not big on action type books (I call these testosterone books because they're usually written by men and the love connections are lacking) haha

I'm not sure I've really answered this question but it was really introspective and I liked thinking through this one!

[bernelli]

Oh -- and how does this book rate with books I generally read/rate...

I know there are a ton of Christie fans, but she's very far from my well-liked authors and I typically only read her when she's chosen for the bookclub. I'm impressed with the movie directors who bring her stories to life on the big screen and make me see things from the book that I read as very flat. This book was the same as her other books for me... I have to work very hard to like her stories (I think it's because her characters are all so shallow). I missed this boat and feel FOMO about it!

[lee058]

I read a lot of science fiction, so I am interested in how new technology and space travel/colonization would affect people. I am also interested in how people change over time.

I'll try and write more later; I have to leave soon.

[sal]

Friday: (you knew this one was coming)

So. The movie. Have you seen it? How did it compare to the book in your view (on a liked / didn't like basis)? Did it bear the slightest resemblance to the book in your view? If not, why do you think that was?

[sal]

No. Resemblance. At. ALL.

I really liked the movie, and the only common factors I could see: Poirot, Ariadne (though she was quite different in personality), a couple of common character names that bore no resemblance to those in the book, and there was a Halloween party involved.

Book had mood, actually cared about children, and I felt had some decent character development and a plot that seemed more coherent (shoving it all into 24 hours helped). My husband's opinion is they got the rights cheap, and then just wrote their own story since they could then use the Poirot name. Makes as much sense to me as anything else.

In any case, if you haven't seen the movie, do. It's not quite Death on the Nile, but it's worth the viewing. And you won't be spoiled by having read this book, because nothing about them meshes so it's a totally new thing.