It almost seems unfair that I'm doing a review on this, as it is literally just a collection of letters and photos from Ms Christie's younger days. It seems wrong somehow to force an opinion of how you have enjoyed something like this, about someone else's life with no fictional aspect, but I have committed.
I picked up this copy as a birthday present to myself. We were on holiday for my 28th and in Torquay, solely so I could step in the house that Agatha Christie herself had loved, and see what she saw. Throughout this personal pilgrimage I found that the famed author and I aren't so different despite the periods in which we live, and this was a great comfort to me.
So when I got to the gift shop I wanted something I hadn't had before, and the only book that I don't already own was this one. I got it stamped with the Greenway stamp and tucked in to enjoy as soon as I was home again.
Edited by her Grandson, Matthew, the book shows Agatha in a light that we were all unfamiliar with. We start out early on in her first marriage when she and Archie go off around the world for 10 months on an expedition. They left their daughter at home, and we see a great deal of personal letters Agatha sent to her mother, daughter, and sister, chronicling her travels.
These seemed like happy times for Agatha, she was a young adventurer seeing the world for the first time and eagerly drinking it all in. Her own flesh and blood mentions how due to circumstances as she grew older, this version of Agatha never surfaced again. I think this is terribly sad, but it happens to us all. As we grow we find new personas based on how we have lived. I feel privileged to have been able to see how she was early in her career, back when things were new and rose tinted.
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