octaivia's Book Journey

"Also, I had a friend—a friend who for many years never left my side. Occasionally of an imbecility to make one afraid, nevertheless he was very dear to me. Figure to yourself that I miss even his stupidity." Savage Poirot is the best, really! 😅😅 But, in any case we certainly don't miss him though🥴

Because I listened to a podcast episode on Agatha Christie’s life, this book was ruined for me since it became massively famous for having an unreliable narrator. I am still devastated I wasn’t able to experience the book blind 🥲

That being said I decided to make the best of it. Since I knew who had done it, I became obsessed over how he had done it. And let me tell you, even knowing what I did, I could not figure it out until Poirot spoonfed it to me 😭 At one point I was fully the meme of the crazed man with the red strings just GODAMMIT HOW DID YOU DO IT SHEPPARD 🤬. I want to be proud that I was able to guess all of the sub plots’ reveals long before they were revealed in the book but I also suspect that Christie made them obvious so the blind reader would be distracted by them and not think too hard on Sheppard. There were a few clever moments that Sheppard himself mentions in his final chapter but my favorite was that in the early chapters when he needs to recount his version of events of the murder he never says “I told the police everything that happened” or “I told Poirot what I had seen” etc he always says that he recounted the facts as laid down before. The way he writes the initial letter scene with Ackroyd was also so vague that I immediately was like aha that’s when he did it. And then Flora claimed to see her uncle at 9:45, giving Sheppard an even more watertight alibi than before. The phone call also really threw me off and it’s probably why multiple editions use it as the cover. While I am upset that I wasn’t able to experience the twist, I am impressed that even knowing everything I still couldn’t figure out how he had done it. Hats off to you Agatha Christie 👏👏👏