Rebecca Schinsky (2:22)

Yeah. And we're hoping that this can be something that we do on some kind of more regular basis. So folks, as you get to hear the new segment, if you have thoughts or feedback or really anything you can email us@podcastookriot.com our draft Jeff's in My draft of the Big Books of Fall is out on the Patreon now, so you can check that out. Patreon.com bookriotpodcast and our new show, Zero to well Read launched last week with an episode about the Great Gatsby. As you're hearing this in the main feed, the next one coming on Tuesday will be Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. We had a really wonderful conversation and if you've listened to the show for a long time, you know that Harlem Renaissance writers and that era of American fiction is one of Jeff's sweet spots, so he really got to put on his professor hat for a little bit. Thanks to everybody for the great feedback and the warm reception for zero to well read so far. As of this recording on September 11th, we are number three on the books charts on Apple Podcasts, which is very exciting. We've been working on the show for a good chunk of this year and we're so excited to finally have it out in the world. So let's take our first sponsor break and then we'll get into the news.

Sponsor/Ad Reader (3:38)

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Vanessa Diaz (4:44)

Foreign.

Sponsor/Ad Reader (4:48)

Today's episode is brought to you by Xando, publisher of the Burial Tide by Neal Sharpson. Do you want something eerie and creepy and Irish? Well, on an eerily quiet island off the coast of Ireland, a woman with no memory claws her way out of her grave and back to life. But not everyone welcomes the return of Mara Fitch Anishpinok, where strange misshapen figures watch from the trees and the roads are covered in teeth, where two brothers gamble for nothing, the doctor treats only one patient, and the pub owner speaks in riddles where a poet loses and finds his soul, and a man without a heart claims he's the key to unlocking Mara's secrets. So begins the Burial Tide, the thrilling new novel by Neil Sharpson. Drawing on the horrors of Irish folklore, the Burial Tide is being called mesmerizing and a twisty cinematic whirlwind by critics. Discover what secrets are unearthed in the Burial Tide, where the more the woman remembers, the more the villagers will do anything to stop her. So make sure to pick up the Burial Tide by Neal Sharpson. And thanks again to Xando for sponsoring this episode.

Rebecca Schinsky (5:56)

This episode is brought to you by Swiped A Hulu original from 20th Century Studios. Meet the woman who made the first move. Starring Lily James as Whitney Wolf, the visionary founder of Bumble. Through extraordinary grit and ingenuity, Whitney breaks into the male dominated tech industry and launches an innovative, globally lauded dating app. Forever changing dating culture. A Hulu original swiped streaming September 19th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. All right, Vanessa, we got follow up on what's happening in the courts and it's a two part story that starts with big money. Earlier this summer we covered a lawsuit filed by a group of authors, a class action suit against Anthropic, the AI company that runs the Claude large language model. And they alleged that Anthropic violated their copyright by taking their books, using them to train large language models without their permission. The finding in June was pretty disappointing for authors because the judge in this case, he's a California federal court judge, said that it was fine to use copyrighted materials without permission as long as they were legally acquired. And that caveat turns out to have been particularly important because now these authors have followed up with well, Anthropic admitted to pirating many books and we believe that our books were among those that were pirated. Pirated copies are not included in what the judge said was allowed under fair use. And Anthropic agreed to pay a class action settlement of $1.5 billion. Billion with a B. Yeah. To the authors in this class, about half a million books are thought to be covered by this. That's about $3,000 per title that's included. A pretty significant win.

Vanessa Diaz (7:52)

Yeah, it was late on whatever day this week when you first dropped that news and when they saw the billion, it was like, oh, honestly, I did not know what was going to come of that. And that billion definitely took me by surprise. And I'm glad to see that. Well, before we give the second update to this story, that that was really cool news for the authors, I wonder how they came up with the 3000. That has to have been such a project, which is why there are so many lawyers involved in this. This is a really sticky thing to try to unpack. But yeah, I was surprised and it's good news, ostensibly in a good way.

Rebecca Schinsky (8:25)

Yeah, the settlement dropped end of the day on Friday last week. So we had already recorded the news show. Jeff and I had talked about that this was ongoing. We didn't know details of the settlement yet. And then Monday morning there were some follow ups as well. So first off, as this dropped, all the authors were celebrating. This is being called a landmark settlement, a historic thing, a really important win for authors and publishers and something that establishes that there will be consequences for AI companies who have, at least in the cases where they have pirated books. And I think all of the AI companies that have been taken to court over this so far have admitted that at least some of the materials they used were pirated. Everything in that books three data set that the Atlantic spent the summer of 2023 unear. Thing was, I think all of those were pirated. So that's a huge number of books that were used without author's permission. Everybody was feeling good about this. Like, billion with a B is a big deal in the world of books and reading, but Anthropic raises billions of dollars on a regular basis, so kind of cost of doing business for them. It was followed up earlier this week on the 9th with news that the judge has delayed approval of the copyright settlement. And there's a lot of moving parts, as you were saying in this case. But it boils down to the judge having concerns about multiple components here. One concern is that the settlement might be, quote, being forced down the throat of the authors. He also says at one point in a direct quote, he's concerned that they will get the shaft, which I was not aware of, could be used in a legal filing.

Vanessa Diaz (10:12)

I. So you said that in one of our newsletter that we recently launched. And I like read it and totally thought that was like Rebecca Speak, you know, And I also laughed and I realized it was in quotes and I went, wait, no, yes. That's a thing you can say from a bench.

Rebecca Schinsky (10:26)

I know I think I described him as giving some side eye, but he himself said that he was concerned that the authors might be getting the shaft. But there's also concerns on the other side that how do we come to a conclusion that this class is complete? What happens to stragglers? This class action settlement should apply to a group of authors. I think the deadline for all of these filings is October 10th. The next hearing is September 25th. And the judge was saying we've got to make sure also that anthropic is protected from people coming out of the woodwork who would have fit in this class, but who come after the fact. So how are we going to do this? The other related piece is that a group of authors have sued Apple now for the exact same thing on the heels of the settlement announcement. So now it's just a waiting game of when are we going to see something similar? There are already actions being taken against Meta and OpenAI, but will we start to get settlement news or talk of settlements being negotiated? So that's the state of play there. I don't expect we'll hear anything else about this until at least that next hearing on September 25th.

Vanessa Diaz (11:34)

Yeah, I don't think so either, but I'm really interested to see what that domino effect will be because this is just such a huge issue. So, yeah, more fingers over here.

Rebecca Schinsky (11:42)

Yeah. And these big cases have both been in California so far, and the judges have not agreed on what's going on there. So are we going to establish this with case law? Are we someday going to get actual laws made by Congress around how this works? And who will get there first is a real question.

Vanessa Diaz (12:01)

Absolutely.

Rebecca Schinsky (12:02)

Interesting. Other big news this week is that the National Book Award longlists have started coming out as we are recording. The long lists have been revealed for everything except fiction. So we've got young people's literature, translated literature, poetry, and nonfiction. And by the time you're hearing this episode, the fiction list will be live. And of course, that's the one that we're all the most curious and interested about. Anything notable to you on these long lists so far?

Vanessa Diaz (12:29)

This is like my forever trend of me going, is this the year where I'm going to have read some of the stuff on these lists? And like, more often than not, the answer is no. And that's just a function of the way I have to read for the work I do on shows, et cetera. But I am interested in, specifically in the nonfiction list. Seeing one day everyone will always have been against this was nice to See, I've been meaning to read Black Moses for some time, so that was great. It's overall what feels like a pretty balanced list. We've got some. The National Book Awards are I think usually pretty good about making sure to make this a diverse and inclusive list. But the fiction one is absolutely the one that I am the most likely to have read something from. So for selfish reasons I'm like, come on, come out. But I gotta wait.

Rebecca Schinsky (13:12)

Yeah, for personal interest. That's the one I'm really waiting on. Now I've got some ego skin in the game from our Fantasy Books League and we'll see if any of the books I've picked have made that. And then because we had to reschedule our final trading round for the Fantasy League, we're going to. We'll be doing that in a couple of weeks so we can try to pull some of these finalists if we think that that has. That it portends anything good for the books in the future. Kelly Jensen, one of our colleagues who's a YA expert, pointed out that one of the young people's literature nominations, Truth by Hannah V. Sawyer. It's a novel in verse. Pretty significant this year it is about a 17 year old girl getting an abortion in post roe America. So that one is notable. Translated literature features the first shortlist or, sorry, the first long listed book written in Uzbek. It's called We Computers by Hamid Ismailov. So that's a cool thing to see, like how many different languages are represented among translated literature and we do not by Han Kang, who is, you know, beloved here at the Book Riot podcast, but also a Nobel Prize winner. I was surprised to see that this is the first time she's been nominated for the National Book Award.

Vanessa Diaz (14:28)

You took the word out of my mouth. I was surprised to see that too. Yeah.

Rebecca Schinsky (14:32)

And great nominations, of course, poetry, which I have never read nearly as much.

Vanessa Diaz (14:36)

Of as I never have a prayer on that one. Every year I say and yet I'm like, okay, well there's a list for me to pull from. Yeah.

Rebecca Schinsky (14:43)

And one of my picks for the Fantasy League, Hunchback by SAO Ichikawa, a short little debut novel is on the long list for training translated literature. So I'm rooting for that. I really, really liked the book and thought that she's doing something important and interesting there and I'm going to be pulling for that one just because it's great, but also because I would earn some points in the competitive spreadsheets of.

Vanessa Diaz (15:06)

We all know about the points and the Spreadsheets. Yes, absolutely.

Rebecca Schinsky (15:09)

Fantasy league. Anything from your fiction reading this year that you're hoping to see make that long list?

Vanessa Diaz (15:15)

Of course. Now that you put me on the spot, I'm like, what are the books that I have?

Rebecca Schinsky (15:18)

I ever read books in the world?

Vanessa Diaz (15:19)

Yeah. No, I'm literally asking myself. Like, I mean, it would. I don't like. Wait. Actually, this is an interesting opportunity to ask you, because even though I just read it, I forgot. What is that nomination window again?

Rebecca Schinsky (15:29)

Oh, yes. The National Book Awards nomination window, I thought was a calendar year, and I think I've been giving them credit for it on the show the last couple of weeks because Jeff and I have been ranting about this. It is December 1st of the past year through November 30th of the present year.

Vanessa Diaz (15:47)

Yeah. Okay. So whack. Yeah. Now I'm trying to do the gymnastics of which of the books that I would have wanted to see on that list. I don't know that I can come up with them right off the top. Do we think an RF Kuang is gonna make it onto.

Rebecca Schinsky (16:02)

I don't think so.

Vanessa Diaz (16:03)

I don't think so either. But that's what I was like. Well, there could be something there. I don't. Honestly, looking at a lot of the reading I've been doing, I think it might be too. Not that genre doesn't deserve the respect, because I wish it did, but I think a lot of it might be too genre to end up on some of these kinds of lists. Although I would really love to be wrong.

Rebecca Schinsky (16:18)

Someday they'll roll out a category for best mystery inspired by the Golden Girls.

Vanessa Diaz (16:22)

And your time, and then we'll be good. I had actually hoped that we would see so many stars on the nonfiction list because I really did love that book so much.

Rebecca Schinsky (16:30)

It would feel like a contender.

Vanessa Diaz (16:32)

Yeah, I thought for sure that would be on there. That one was one of the only ones that I think in the back of my head, I had like, okay, this will be a good National Book Awards talk. And the rest, I think, to be honest, if I had to pull from it, I would be pulling from something that the books that you and Jeff have talked about this year, like, I expected to see Hong Kong on here. Yeah. What about your fiction picks? Are you.

Rebecca Schinsky (16:51)

I mean, I would love to see audition by audition, the house fave so far as fiction goes here. But also two books that I'm going to talk about in front list foyer that I just recently read, I think could both be contenders. Ruth by Kate Reilly is a debut novel had a lot of heat behind it, really positive reviews when it came out a couple of weeks ago. And the Wilderness by Angela Flournoy, her long awaited follow up to the Turner House, was listed as a finalist for this year's Kirkus Prize for Fiction, has a shot at winning. We'll find out in October who that is, but I think we might see her on the National Book Awards longlist. So we'll see. We'll find out on Friday.

Vanessa Diaz (17:34)

I will be so shocked if any of my like I'm looking at this list. It's like cozy, cozy, mystery, weird and cozy, Slightly less cozy. Haunted Blood. Okay, well, I don't know.

Rebecca Schinsky (17:42)

You're having a great time and I love that for you.

Vanessa Diaz (17:46)

We all have our places in this literary wheel.

Rebecca Schinsky (17:50)

And speaking of Audition by Katie Kitamura, Jeff was sure to let me know this morning. He is very excited to see and of course I'm stoked for this as well that it is going to be adapted. The Obama's production company, Higher Ground will be producing with Charles Milton and Lucy Liu starring. I am so interested in how this book is going to translate on screen because it's kind of two books in one. A thing happens in the middle that turns your understanding of the first half of the book kind of on its head. And how they will present that on screen is going to be very interesting. But I'm stoked to see big names attached to a Kitamura adaptation. I'm a little bit surprised that this is the first Kitamura adaptation that we're going to get.

Vanessa Diaz (18:39)

Ooh, yeah. Gosh, that just seems like such an undertaking to do Kiddimore's work. I'm really happy to see it too, but I'm like, where do you even begin?

Rebecca Schinsky (18:47)

I think I would have started with a separation. A separation? Yeah, you know, like this woman is gone looking for her husband who's been missing, but something else is happening there and it's dark and twisty and someone probably compared it to Gone Girl incorrectly. But there's a lot to work with there. I'll be really interested in that. So Audition, whenever it comes out on the big screen, will be among my most anticipated hated of whatever year that is. So that's exciting. That's our news. This week hasn't been super heavy on big news, but if you want more news, you can subscribe to Book Riot's new flagship newsletter, which currently is going out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It has a little bit of everything for your reading life. We're having a great time with it so far. There's a link in the show Notes. We'd love to have you join the 400,000 book nerds who are currently getting that if you subscribe to, you know, like the Morning Brew or Axios or any of those big news aggregator newsletters. It's like that, except it's entirely about books. So come hang out with us and have fun in the mornings. Let's stroll on over to Front List Foyer. Actually, let's take a sponsor break and then we will make a journey to Front List Foyer.

Vanessa Diaz (20:03)

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Rebecca Schinsky (20:34)

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Vanessa Diaz (22:29)

Ooh, I've got two picks that I'm really excited about. One of them actually came out in June. I had kind of just forgotten about it, but it's, you know, still frontless. And that is Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman. I don't actually think I've read Laura Lippman in a really long time, but she's a pretty.

Rebecca Schinsky (22:43)

I think you have.

Vanessa Diaz (22:43)

Yeah, she's like, a prolific mystery writer, and she's got many books, but one of the series that she's really well known for is the oh, my gosh, Tess Monaghan series. I believe she's a private investigator. And this new book that she just brought out, which I don't. I don't recall whether it's a standalone or if it's the first in a series, but it takes a character from those books, like a woman that used to work as an assistant to that PI and gives her her own story.

Rebecca Schinsky (23:07)

Cool.

Vanessa Diaz (23:08)

Completely accidentally. She is a woman of a certain age being an amateur sleuth. Like, I promise I did not come in here, like, only talk about the books of the old lady sleuths. But that is.

Rebecca Schinsky (23:17)

Your personal algorithm is so strong, though.

Vanessa Diaz (23:19)

It's so strong. Like, I really didn't intend for it. I kind of picked it up because I heard that it was like, a mystery, that it took place, like, in Europe and in part on a cruise, and that there was having to do with it. And it is this. Like, just summarize it as shortly as I can. It's this woman who is a widow. She's living with her daughter when the daughter announces that, like, her husband and her kids are moving to Tokyo because the husband's been relocated. And so now she's like, what do I do with my life? And she quite literally stumbles across, finds a lottery ticket on the ground one day, keeps it, like, in the hopes. Oh, you never know. And she wins the lottery. Like, she tries to give it back. It doesn't, you know, no one claims it, et cetera. Decides to book, like, the vacation of a lifetime to sort of figure out her place in the. Meets a little gentleman on the way. But problem, couple days into little gets her groove back. She gets the Groove back and then the groove dies because that guy turns up dead. And because of the way that the trip has planned out, of course, all the heat is on her. Like, how convenient that you spent all this time with this guy because the circumstances are really kind of quirky. And I kept thinking that I knew the obvious solution here, but there's an art heist involved too. And it takes place again on the cruise, off the cruise, in different places in Europe. It was really cool. And there is a lot of talk about, you know, how women of a certain age tend to be able to get away with stuff like this because society makes them invisible. And so this, you know, it sucks. But that is why I'm able to like, put my nose where it doesn't belong because you're not paying attention to me. So that one was really fun. And then my second great time. Oh, it was great. Like, I blew through it and I now want to go back and do some more Tess Monahan. And Tess Monaghan has a little like an appearance in the books. It was a cute little tie in. I was like, okay, I need to go spend time with some more of Laura Lipman for just like a classic. Like, you're gonna get a nice mystery out of this. And then my second pick could not be more different and like blew my hair back. It's the Macabre by Kosoko Jackson.

Rebecca Schinsky (25:10)

Oh, I've been seeing this. It's his adult debut, right?

Vanessa Diaz (25:14)

Adult debut, yeah. Really cool. Like, honestly, I wanted to read it, not knowing who it was by or much about it because the COVID is just really stunning. It's one of those that has a special edition, but it's completely just like a blood red, like the spreads and it's just really drippy. And there's a creepy art piece on the front. And that is kind of the vibe. It's about a young, like 20somethings, gay black artist in Baltimore who, his mom just passed away. Banger of a prologue. I won't talk about it much here, but it's just like so good. But then you immediately get flash forward 18 weeks and you find out that he got this invitation in the mail telling him to come to this, like, big art exhibition that the British Museum is doing that's sort of like a sorry, we stole all of the world's art. So now we're gonna highlight art from like all the colonies we've ever had. And so he's the US pick and he's like, cool. Except that when he shows up, it's not what it sounds like. And he actually finds out that he is the descendant of a man who painted these nine cursed paintings that need to be tracked down because something very, very evil lurks within each of them. And then so you get this time travel story of him going all around the world and physically into these paintings and, like, living what's in the paintings. It's really, really cool and creepy. So, so creepy. But I need to go back and read some more Kosoko Jackson, because it's very different from a lot of his other writing, as I gather, but it's really, really cool.

Rebecca Schinsky (26:33)

That sounds awesome. As I mentioned, I've been reading Ruth by Kate Reilly came out earlier this summer, and it was not on my radar at all. And then the week that it came out, there were great reviews of it in several of the big publications, and I was like, oh, let's pay attention to this. I am so glad that I did. It's about a woman who grows up on an Anabaptist commune. Like a, like, kind of rare sect of Christianity in which all of their property is communal. So you live in, like, shared housing. The groceries are, like, delivered to each household in the community by a central group that manages it. Like, your own property is very minimal. It's a very collective kind of culture. When you are the age where you wish to get married, you can, like, request permission to discuss marriage with someone else in the community, and then you need permission to marry them. And it's a whole very organized community thing. The leaders decide which of the outposts you live on. She starts off with her family of origin that she's growing up on in Northern Michigan. But at any time, the powers that be can say, like, well, we need your family to move to the outpost over here. Or you're a young married couple, and we don't have enough of those at this other outpost. So you get moved around. Folks. Folks don't have much control of their lives and they don't own their own property, as I said. But that's part of the appeal for many of the members of this group. This novel is mesmerizing. It gives us her entire life. We start off when she's five or six, and we move up through every major developmental point of her life, through adolescence, through eventually getting married, becoming a mother, trying to understand herself in the world. And she's not completely isolated. The members of her culture can go to college or can get jobs off of the property. So they have interactions with the modern world. They have Internet access, they have phones but it's all on, you know, like, shared terminals and shared telephone access. So it's pretty controlled and limited. But they do have bumps up against what modern culture looks like. It's, like, really quiet. It pulls us through these moments of her life, both mundane ones and the major ones. But the major ones are kind of treated as mundane, like nothing is a big deal in this world. And Ruth is not quite a black sheep, but she thinks differently. And she loves, like, creativity and language. And she has this kind of internal something bordering on whimsy where she wants to play. And it feels to the reader like she's bigger than this life that she's been given. There's this, you know, rhythm to her days and rhythm to the culture, to their community, to the ways that they follow the calendar. But the writing never falls into that rhythm. So you don't feel like it's repetitive. We don't necessarily know if she finds her life to be repetitive or if this rhythm is soothing. But she makes these just fresh, delightful, surprising observations. She never quite fits in, but she also never leaves. There's, like, one moment where she starts to understand how people who don't live there might perceive her life. And someone offers her a chance to leave. And it seems like she might. She chafes at the constraints, but she doesn't follow the arc that, like, our current discourse would want her to, of getting mad at the constraints of her life and confronting them or leaving them. It's, like, so quiet and so lovely and kind of all the more heartbreaking for being those things. I just loved it so much. And then I also read the Wilderness by Angela Flournoy.

Vanessa Diaz (30:26)

It's.

Rebecca Schinsky (30:26)

Man, it's so good. It's out this week.

Vanessa Diaz (30:28)

I have it. I'm looking at it. I met her at ala.

Rebecca Schinsky (30:31)

It is out this week as you're listening to the show comes out on the 16th. It follows a group of black women through decades of life together. We meet them in their twenties, but the book moves back and forth in time from the early 2000s into the late 2000s. We do a little speculative stuff here. The book, it opens with an epigraph from Audre Lorde. There is direct homage to Octavia Butler in the text. You can tell that Flournoy must love Sula by Toni Morrison for what is happening in these women's friendships. But they do the things that longtime friends do. They see each other so clearly. They call each other out on their shit. They support each other in ways that no other relationships in their life show. Up to support them and through it all is just really incredible well done commentary about how race and class and gender and geography impact these women because we move between New York and LA and she's wrestling class is so present in this book. Both between how the women have different financial situations and move between different financial strata. But they also really wrestle with homelessness quite a bit and Americans reactions to treatment of failure to handle the issues of homelessness. The book was surprising like seven times. There were so many moments where I thought I knew where Flournoy was taking us and I was excited about it. And then she zagged and it was even better just operating on a different level. I am stoked for this one to come out in the world. I'm glad that everybody else can read it this week.

Vanessa Diaz (32:12)

Oh, I might have to bump that up further on the to be read. Yeah, I can't wait. I saw her at ALA this year and I was talking to our sales guy about something and then completely just cut him off mid sentence to make a hard and went Angela Flournoy. And I left and he was like what? And I just got in line and I was like hello, you know what?

Rebecca Schinsky (32:28)

Worth it. Like this was worth waiting a decade for. I hope we don't have to wait a decade for another one.

Vanessa Diaz (32:33)

I hope. Oh my gosh, I can't wait. And she was lovely.

Rebecca Schinsky (32:36)

So I'm so glad to hear it. So that is Frontless Toyer and what we've been reading and now let's take our last break and then Vanessa will take us down the rabbit hole.

Vanessa Diaz (32:49)

Used to describe an individual whose spirit is.

Rebecca Schinsky (32:51)

Unyield, unconstrained, one who navigates life on their own terms, effortlessly.

Vanessa Diaz (32:57)

They do not always show up on time, but when they arrive you notice.

Rebecca Schinsky (33:01)

An individual confident in their contradictions. They know the rules but behave as if they do not exist.

Vanessa Diaz (33:11)

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Rebecca Schinsky (34:00)

All right, Vanessa, what do you have for me?

Vanessa Diaz (34:03)

Here we go. So I want to give some context first. So a thing that I think about a lot as a managing editor is obviously content, right? And we're always looking at, like, what do we talk about? And a lot of it is focused, of course, for good reason, on what's happening now, because that's what we want to do. We want to stay on top of what's the news, what are the books that are buzzy, what's, you know, important to the zeitgeist, et cetera. But a thing that I constantly also run into while deciding what to cover and seeing what other people are talking about is that idea that, like, nothing is new, but actually it is because I forget that new readers are being born every day who don't necessarily know the thing that I'm like, no, we can't cover that again. We've already done it sort of thing. And I'm always so interested to see how well people respond to that sort of thing. So not to say that I only ever want to cover things from, like, a long time ago, but we haven't had space in any of our shows recently, although we did at once with a show that I really loved here at Book Riot called Annotated, where we did these deep dives into, like, book culture stuff. So this was definitely born from that. And I'll be fully transparent that this topic that I'm kind of launching with was covered actually on that podcast, but in a different angle. So because this show will come out on Monday, which happens to be September 15, which happens to be the birthday of the person that I'm about to talk about, we're going to discuss the queen of crown crime, Agatha Christie. Okay, so Rebecca herself produced an episode about Agatha Christie that aired back in. Oh, gosh, what year was this now? Like, so many years ago.

Rebecca Schinsky (35:27)

Many years.

Vanessa Diaz (35:28)

Because I wasn't. I didn't work for Book Ray. Yeah. And I was very much like, I want to infiltrate these ranks because I really, really loved that episode. Yeah.

Rebecca Schinsky (35:35)

It was about when Agatha Christie went missing for a while.

Vanessa Diaz (35:39)

And we will absolutely get into that.

Rebecca Schinsky (35:41)

Husband was running around on her, and she maybe just, like, went to take the waters and assume a different identity for a long time.

Vanessa Diaz (35:48)

Always refer to this as she just went to take the waters. That or like the original Gone Girl, because that was the title of the show. And it also really is like, kind of what happened. And we'll get into that. But so it seems really like obvious to me who she is because she is the best selling, in theory, author in the world. It kind of vacillates back and forth between whether it's her and Shakespeare. So if you're like a hardcore Billy Shakes person, as I am, don't come for me. Like, they're right there neck and neck. And if you just go fiction, it's Agatha, but she is obviously known as the Queen of Crime. She didn't invent, but certainly popularize some of the most used tropes in mystery fiction and fiction in general. Of course we've got, you know, the unreliable narrator and the closed circle mystery. But I want to go a little bit into just her story. Like, I feel like whenever we hear about her, it's either focused on her fiction or of course on the incident where she went missing. But she's got a lot of like, life stuff that I think is interesting. And I figured we would just spend a time going down that rabbit hole.

Rebecca Schinsky (36:39)

Let's do it.

Vanessa Diaz (36:40)

So I want to start off by obviously, you know plenty about this incident, but, like, you're not a huge mystery reader, at least I don't believe so. So, like, what is your like to Agatha Christie?

Rebecca Schinsky (36:50)

I basically know about Agatha Christie. The things that you just said.

Sponsor/Ad Reader (36:53)

Great about her.

Rebecca Schinsky (36:54)

I think I have read a few of the books back in, you know, maybe high school. I don't think I read them in college. I don't have any, like, serious study background of Agatha Christie. My husband Bob loved Agatha Christie. So I think there's like, the collected works are somewhere in this house. And his mom also really loved her. And I'm familiar with the, like the Locked room that I, you know, the Agatha Christie thing, but I don't. Yes, the event. I don't have a lot of personal attachment to the work or the person other than having researched that episode of Annotation.

Vanessa Diaz (37:29)

Yes. Yeah, that's what I kind of had the impression of my relationship was that as a kid who, you know, I was learning a lot of English through books when I was very, very small. And then once I actually kind of got into a groove, I was reading like a lot of kids, like above my, my reading level, which was fine, but I was blasting through like the recommended reading lists that our teacher was giving us, which frankly I thought were like kind of softball picks anyway. Which sounds judgy for like a 10 year old or whatever I was. But she got really annoyed with me that I was constantly asking, like, well, what else can I read? What else can I read? And she started giving me.

Rebecca Schinsky (37:59)

90% of the people listening to this podcast are like, yep, that was me.

Vanessa Diaz (38:02)

Well, exactly. That's why I was like, it doesn't even make me special. Right. It's just like, average kid reader, like, is like this when they're young. But she got so. I mean, I say annoyed jokingly, but she was kind of sick of me at this point and was like, I'm just gonna give you a. Of some stuff that's like, much harder, like, go forth and prosper. And the two authors that were all over this page were Willa Cather and Agatha Christie.

Rebecca Schinsky (38:22)

How old were you when she was giving you WILLA Catherine?

Vanessa Diaz (38:25)

Like, 11. Like, I was not. That's. And so, shockingly, my Antonia was fine, but did not resonate the same way.

Rebecca Schinsky (38:34)

For imaginable Agatha Christie's old novels about aging women on the American planes.

Vanessa Diaz (38:40)

Or Willa Gathers. Yeah. And. Yeah, so that's Willie.

Rebecca Schinsky (38:43)

Yes, that's Willie Catherine.

Vanessa Diaz (38:44)

Yeah. So for reasons, right, I was like, I'm gonna try the other author on that list. And that obviously ended up working out much better. Great. Cool. And that, like.

Rebecca Schinsky (38:54)

And a lifelong mystery reader was born.

Vanessa Diaz (38:56)

Yes. No, really. And that I want to say that is where, like, I think I liked mystery flavored things before then I was definitely reading the, like, Harriet the Spy, et cetera. But this was when I was like, oh, okay, cool. And the fact that she had so much for me to blast through was, like, great. And I don't think I knew much about her life, though, until the biography that you referenced a lot in that, in fact, you talk to the author, which I totally forgotten and was pleased to rediscover. Laura Thompson wrote this really comprehensive biography of her called Agatha Christie and Mysterious Life. That just puts a lot of her writing and, like, who she was into a context that I enjoyed and that informed both the things that I love about her and also some of the critiques that, you know, deserve to be said of her writing. So we're just gonna take it way back.

Rebecca Schinsky (39:35)

Okay.

Vanessa Diaz (39:36)

She was Indeed born on September 5, 1890. I think I forgot is that her father was an American, a very, very wealthy American named Frederick Miller. Her mom was named Clarissa. She went by Clara. She was the Irish niece of Frederick's dad's second wife. So, like, he married his. His stepmom's niece. And, like, that was a thing that I just was like, oh, how funny. How keeping the family. But there is some additional layer to that, which Is that Agatha's mom, Clara, was the daughter to another man named Frederick. So she, her dad was Frederick. She married a guy named Frederick. It's all in the family. Fine, fine. Her mom was only 17 when her dad was 36 when they got together and had, over the course of their 12 year marriage, four kids. Unfortunately, the father died. He fell off a horse, like after those 12 years of marriage. And so suddenly Clara's mom, which would have been Agatha Christie's grandma, is now, you know what, in her 20s at this point with four kids and she is impoverished. Like, there's. She has nothing that she can do to support herself. Around that same time, though, her sister was like, I'm gonna marry for money instead. And absolutely does that. Right? She goes to secure a life that is a lot more stable for herself and ends up very consciously entering into a marriage with an older, wealthier man and says, hey, why don't I take one of your kids off of your hands? Which is obviously a difficult decision and we're never really going to know. I don't think much information exists around, like, how she decided that sort of. But she does decide like, that she can and probably should do that because she can't support these kids and ends up giving Clara up to her sister. Okay, so Clara is one of four kids. The others are all boys. They're brothers. So Clara lives a great life, to be honest. Like, you know, she ended up going with the wealthy aunt, though aunt provided for her very, very well.

Rebecca Schinsky (41:19)

You definitely want to be adopted by the wealthy aunt in this situation.

Vanessa Diaz (41:23)

This is how I feel in my bones. Like I hope to be the wealthy aunt that wants to adopt a kid, but that can like, be the person that makes it rain on the nieces and nephews. And so in theory, you're like, looking at this. And of course, you know, a child's perception is going to be different. She's only nine at the time that this happens. But she, even though she lives ostensibly this much better life, like she's given a beautiful home, receives like a fantastic education, lives this like, sparkling life, only ever sees it as like, my parents didn't love me. Of course, that's a thing that of course, like, stays with her. And of course, who could, who could like, argue or like, you know, discredit that sensation because you're a kid and you want to stay with your parents, like, why couldn't you make it work? But we do get the impression from Agatha herself, who talks about this, like, situation, that she's like, ah, pretty sure that her mom. Mom felt that way because her grandmother would have told her at some point that, like, girls need a help in the world, they need, like, an advantage to get a leg up, and boys just make luck happen. And that explanation, I don't think did anything to further those issues of insecurity. But the thing that came from that is that Clara. And this is like a phrase that you see used anytime you look up both Clara, Agatha's mom, or Agatha herself is this concept that they had very vivid inner lives, which is just like, okay, you had a vivid imagination. Right. Clara is known to be this excellent storyteller and a person who made imagination safe and possible in her home, clearly. Right. She ends up doing something to me that feels, like, similarly flavored. When she decides how to raise her own kids. Not exactly, but kind of. So she ends up, you know, with this man, Frederick. They get married. They have two kids, Madge and Monty, so a daughter and a son. But Those kids are 11 and 10 by the time that Agatha comes into the of the world. They're now living in this place called Torquay. It's this, like, very bougie, at least at the time, resort, like, seaside town in Devon, which is in the southwest of England. And they, again, there's a bit of a gap. Agatha is referred to often as a much loved afterthought, which.

Rebecca Schinsky (43:23)

Woof.

Vanessa Diaz (43:24)

Like, if your parents are gonna call you an afterthought, I suppose it's good that they call you a much loved one. But, like, thank you.

Rebecca Schinsky (43:30)

I don't know that. I don't know that there are any. Any adverbs or adjectives you can put before afterthought that make. There's no way to modify that. That really makes it better. Yeah.

Vanessa Diaz (43:40)

And, like, given the relationship she ends up having with her parents, like, okay, obviously she got over it. But, like, that was one that literally made me every time I read it. Like, okay, cool, great. So you'd, like, start your life being told that you were, like, an afterthought.

Rebecca Schinsky (43:50)

Yeah. The fact that her literary career was not like the glass castle of, like, let me just write memoirs about my troubled childhood is remarkable. Remarkable.

Vanessa Diaz (43:58)

And it's funny because these things do end up bleeding into her work in ways that I don't think are immediately obvious to folks who maybe only read her casually or, like, only read, like, the big blockbuster stuff. That's something I want to talk about a little. So the context of her actual. Like, if you want to talk about how she kind of started to become A writer is like. Her parents also made the choice not to, even though they did do this with her other kids, not to formally educate her. The other two were sent off to boarding school. School. Whereas she was essentially homeschooled by a combination of. I've seen a couple different reports that it might have been the governesses, might have been her dad, might have also been her mom. But her mom, for reasons that I can't figure out, was very like, she may not learn to read until she reaches the age of 8. I don't know why 8 was the magical number, but it was. So instead, Agatha basically, like, pulls a Matilda and, like, goes and, like, teach, and somebody out there's gonna be, like, Matilda came much later. Yes, I know it's a metaphor, but she.

Rebecca Schinsky (44:53)

Okay, hot take. What if Agatha Christie was the.

Vanessa Diaz (44:55)

The of.

Rebecca Schinsky (44:55)

End. Inspiration for Matilda?

Vanessa Diaz (44:56)

I literally almost baked that into this and was like, I can't wait for the letter writing. But basically does that. Like, she teaches herself how to read. She's already got all of this, like, storytelling magic happening with the way that her mom, like, communicates, like, stuff that's, you know, in her vivid inner life. But they choose not to educate her. She still decides to, like, go on. But this theme of the parents, if you read some of her later work, like Mrs. McKenty's dead, for example, has this whole. Whole monologue where this character, just for reasons that I can't even remember how well they flow with the rest of the plot because it's been a while since I read it, but just goes on this tangent that basically is verbatim going down. Like, what happened to her mom? Or it's like, oh, I had to, like. I think I even, like, wrote the quote down somewhere for myself where she's like, oh. And then she. I. You know, she was given up for reasons that make no sense. But, like, why wouldn't you just keep the kid with your family? Because obviously that kid is going to be, like, harmed by this. So she works that. And if you pay attention to some of her other mysteries, she also continually works in these themes of, like, kids needing to just stay with their parents, to stay in their normal surroundings. Like, she very clearly absorbed in a way that Laura Thompson actually talks a lot about in the book. Like, it seems like she absorbed a lot of her mom's stuff and kind of took it on for herself in, like, funny little ways.

Rebecca Schinsky (46:10)

Generational trauma comes from generational trauma.

Vanessa Diaz (46:12)

And of course, you never have called it that. She doesn't refer to it that way when she talks about her mom in her own biography, which, if you've read, is also, you know, miss missing certain pieces of context that we know now about her life, including the when she went missing episode. But it is so interesting to me how. Because the thing about Agatha that everybody also knows is she always talks about how she was a daddy's girl. She loved her father and her were like this. That was just it. And she ended up being much closer with her mom later, but they didn't have that relationship in the beginning. And yet so much of the time that she spends in that biography and in her books is clearly so spent talking about the issues that it feels like her mother never got to unpack for herself. And I've always just found that really interesting in the way it bleeds into those themes. Part of the reason I think that she was able to, like, idolize her dad so much is because he was just around. And the reason he was around is because he had money. He was a socialite.

Rebecca Schinsky (47:02)

Like, well, that'll do it.

Vanessa Diaz (47:03)

That'll. That'll do it. Like, she has this quote that is listed in a lot of books. It's like, from the age 5 to 12, I led a wonderfully happy life. And I remember thinking, that's a really specific age range. Why is that? So I kind of, like, dug into that a tiny bit. Her family did live in this room, really bougie home called Ashfield, which, like, side. Now, anytime your house has, like, a name, you got money. Like, money, right? Like, I don't. We don't call my house, like, the Hammer Shot. Whatever. Like, yeah, the Ashfield is called Ash.

Rebecca Schinsky (47:29)

But we could. And we should.

Vanessa Diaz (47:30)

I'm gonna give my apartment, like, a really random name now and only use it in conversation. But. So Ashfield is the name of his house. And they've got servants, they've got governesses, etc. But her dad, again, is American and is a very, very wealthy. Like a socialite in his youth and just a gentleman in his later age. So he just has the time. And one of the things I love about that autobiography or the biography by Laura Thompson is that right in this paragraph where she's going on about what a wonderful relationship Agatha had with her father, how they were so close, how he took the time to tutor her. The very next line is, like, I wrote it down here, she's like, he did nothing. He never did anything. And that was true. He didn't have to. A man of leisure. Yeah. He was sitting on this inheritance, and that's why he was able to, you know, be around for the kids so much. And it was interesting to me that she never quite seems to reflect on that in her fiction. Like she goes a lot, which is probably typical right of the time. She reflects so much on the decisions that the women in her life made, not necessarily the men. Even though that relationship with her father will come to have some pretty tragic implications later, which I think you may also have talked about in the Gaunt Girl episode. So it doesn't take long for Agatha to thus begin crafting her own stories, right? She does the same thing that her mom did, where she got to becomes this very interior kid. She's, you know, filling her mind with all these books that she's reading against, like her parents wishes. She starts writing stories when she's just 11. She even sees some of them published in like local newspapers and poetry reviews. And it's a big deal because, you know, she's the little kid and oh, how cute your story, like made it to the paper. And that all sounds super idyllic until you remember again that Agatha always talks about being really happy for the specific little age range that ends at 12. Twet ends at 12 because right around the time that she's 12 is when some money problems start to perk up. And they had been happening like Agatha when she was, I think as early as 5 recounts that, oh, there were some instances when we kind of had to like rent out the house and leave for a little while. So it seems like they were already starting to have some of these trickles. But the father never wanted to talk about them and didn't. And so by the time Agatha turned 11, her. Her father passed away very suddenly and it freaked everybody out. And upon his death, the family learned that he had been keeping a diary for the better part of maybe a year. It was literally a diary of heart attacks where he was just talking. And you know, it sounds like it was stress from the fact that he knew the money was gone. These investments in the States were going terribly. He just didn't have a lot of cash to his name. But he couldn't bring himself to tell the family any of this. So he.

Rebecca Schinsky (50:03)

I just need clarification. Actual heart attacks are like emotional heart attacks.

Vanessa Diaz (50:07)

Well, that's the thing, right? I'm like, we're never gon know. And because in the letters that the wife eventually finds, he talks about how he was like seeing a physician and then, you know, they were talking about. We do think that there's hope that these Will get better. So I'm like, I don't know, was it anxiety attacks? Were you just losing your hair?

Rebecca Schinsky (50:22)

Like, are you having cardiac events? Or, like, did you need a Xanax and a financial advisor?

Vanessa Diaz (50:27)

Okay. Because to me, it very much sounds like, yeah, what I would. And I can't diagnose, obviously posthumously, but, like, you were probably having anxiety attacks from the fact that you knew that these troubles were coming. And it's not. You know, you had far to fall. They had this estate, he had the kids, etc. Like, it was going to be a big deal. But then he passes. And it is huge to Agatha, obviously. She'd been super close with this man. And that is a thing that does impact, of course, her life in, like, various ways. So now Clara is left with these three kids. Mostly at this point, when you research Agatha, you only really hear her refer to Agatha. And it's probably again, because of that age gap, the older two are probably having to, like, fend for themselves at this point. But money continues to be an issue. They kind of are only hanging on to this Ashfield house, like, by a thread, but they still somehow manage it. And so at age 13, Christy for the first time starts to, like, try to attend a local girls school. Like, she literally has never been educated to this point, ends up studying in Paris. These kinds of things in the next, like, several sections I'm going to talk about, crack me up, because on the left side of my mouth, I'm telling you that they're having money troubles and that they, like, have to figure out a way to strap down. And then when she's like, Paris? Yeah, like, and that was their solution over and over again throughout the course of, like, the rest of Agatha's life. She gets really close to her mom at this time, which, you know, great. They're like, bonded over tragedy. But anytime they have these financially strapped issues, it's like they run away to France for a few months. Or, like, when the mom gets sick, they run away to Cairo. Right. And as much as that is hilarious to me, like, all of those trips, you end up seeing, like, pretty direct through lines to her fiction because she ends up, of course, going to France and like, ends up. She actually ended up studying music. And they thought for a while that she would do music professionally because I guess she was pretty good at it. But she was really, really shy. And so she decided, like, not not to do that. So she's still working on her stories when she's around 18. Her mother's health takes that Turn. That's how they end up in Cairo for three months again. I'm like, y' all do poverty different? Because, like, that is. This is not the way my family has dealt with, like, issues of this nature. But, like, no, we must go. We must go to Cairo. So they do. But the other, like, issue that the reason that they went is because it was a Christie's like, official coming out. This is, you know, when they, they did this back then, the season that you go to, like, try to find. Find a partner. So she does. She apparently, like, goes out there and like, she's getting invited to all these parties and everything. Sounds really cool, but she's like, not really interested in it. But she does end up making a pact with a buddy of hers named Reginald Lucy, who's like, okay, cool. So, like, we're gonna do a two year engagement. We're gonna keep it open though, because if for any reason something better comes along, meaning, like someone more wealthy, then, like, we can change our minds.

Rebecca Schinsky (52:58)

We love a backup plan.

Vanessa Diaz (52:59)

We love a backup plan and backup plan that is because you can't control who you fall in love with. In 1912, a couple, I think, years, like, pretty much not to the day, but like, agreement is like, probably getting close to expire. Agatha goes to a party at this very swanky house and is immediately gone. For this pilot named Archie Christie, the man obviously that gave her her name or her. Her most well known name, it's a whirlwind. It's insta love. Agatha's like, reggie, sorry, it's over. Fine. And the problem with Archie and Agatha, though, is that they have no monies. Like they had, you know, that was supposed to be the intent of her leaving Reginald, was to, like, go through, find like a better situation, but she doesn't. So they end up having to wait a couple of years to like, make this happen. And they don't end up marrying until Christmas Eve, 1914. Archie is a pilot. So their entire, like, first four years of their marriage, which I think is important to recognize what eventually ends up happening in their marriage. She talks about how she doesn't feel like she was actually married to him or didn't begin her marriage until 1918 because they were both really involved in the war effort. World War I is obviously happening around this time. It was like, what, 1914-18, I think. And he's a pilot, so he's literally joined the Royal Flying Corps. She spends a lot of time working for the Red Cross, a hospital that is in her, like, town of Torquay. And then she also ends up working in a pharmacy. And this is another one of those, like, little linchpin moments in her career that doesn't sound like it would be pivotal, but it is because she learns all about, like, pharmacology and poisons, really. She learns the ins and outs of, like, what works for poison. And that ends up being something that she revisits a lot in her fiction to the point where, like, she actually gets recognized for how well she depicts what would happen if you were poisoned. It's not just the casual throw in. She knows exactly what would happen in a way that would, frankly, make me scared.

Rebecca Schinsky (54:48)

You gotta be terrified if you're married to the person who's recognized for her deep understanding of how to make poisons and how they work.

Vanessa Diaz (54:55)

Which is why my theories for where this eventually goes were, like, I always had my secret side theories that I don't think at this point have been disproved. But I'm like, you gotta be looking over your shoulders a tiny little bit.

Rebecca Schinsky (55:05)

If you're like, the total picture here of, like, had not gone to school with other kids until she was 13. Anybody described as having had a vivid inner life, and I think we can count ourselves as among them, is a stone cold weirdo. So she's like, a stone cold weirdo who hasn't. Who's been homeschooled, who's going to these balls trying to meet a husband.

Vanessa Diaz (55:28)

Literally, you. There's a port in my agenda that says, ask Rebecca for a check. And, like, you just verbatim, like, said everything I was, like, hoping you would say, which is, like, we all knew saw this copy coming, right? Like, she was very much a kid who was not around. Not just other, like, not around other things.

Rebecca Schinsky (55:41)

She's not gonna marry the rich guy and have the boring life. She's gonna marry somebody where she can go off and learn about poisons. That's what she's gonna do. This is.

Vanessa Diaz (55:48)

She's been raised by a lady who has also just been telling her, like, these fanciful stories all her life. She was really heavily indulged by her dad. She lived a privileged life. And these are the things, I guess I wanted to spend a lot of my time on today because it really, I think, just informs not just the way she wrote, but, like, the way her life worked out and didn't work out is, I think, pretty clear how we got to that point. If you look at how she lived her life before that and what she did and did not go through on you know her way there. So as for her and Archie, like, they again only see each other, I guess, very infrequently during the war years. So 14 to 18, like they kind of just meet up every once in a while. He finally in 20, I think 20, flashing forward in 1918, does officially get posted somewhere more permanent. He's taken off of active duty and now is working at the War Office in London. And they welcome a daughter in 1919. In this time is when she starts to work on her first novel, which I love that she essentially wrote it because her sister is a hater and said, yeah, you have your little poems and your little stories, but talk to me when you write a full length book. And Agatha is like, hold my beer in my notes. I hold my strychnine because. Because poison. She does indeed begin to write a novel. She starts to write it in 2016, smack in the middle of that first novel. 1916.

Rebecca Schinsky (57:07)

Yes.

Vanessa Diaz (57:08)

I keep like completely flashing us forward in time just to make sure you're paying attention.

Rebecca Schinsky (57:11)

Agatha Christie can time travel. That's also what we're doing.

Vanessa Diaz (57:14)

That's what I'm. That's my secret. I'm going to write a Dan Brown book about it. Yeah.

Rebecca Schinsky (57:20)

A Dan Brown book about Agatha Christie. Time traveling is.

Vanessa Diaz (57:23)

Oh, I would just pass out. Like, you would have to come find me. Someone would have to do a wellness check deck, if you're listening. So in 1916, in the middle of the war, she starts to write this book. It gets rejected, of course. Like, every one of these stories of like the, Ugh, if only you had published. You know, it's seven different publishers reject it before it. Finally somebody takes it in 20. And that book is the Mysterious Affair at Stiles, which introduces us to Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective with the little gray cells.

Rebecca Schinsky (57:53)

The accent work on you.

Vanessa Diaz (57:54)

I try not to be like Hercule Poirot, but then I feel super pretentious. But that was indeed, how you say it, his name. She came up with him because during that First World War, I didn't know this until recently, thousands of refugees were that fled the fighting in Belgium, specifically came to where she was working at in Torquay. So she got this idea of, like, what if I were to, you know, make a detective who was a Belgian and had all these powers of, you know, deduction and perception and then the poisons, like, she wanted to work the.

Rebecca Schinsky (58:23)

Poison and then the poisons got it.

Vanessa Diaz (58:25)

She absolutely worked in strychnine into that book. And then that book is the. Of 1:1, the mysterious of Ferret Styles. That again, a lot of comment was made on, like, this is the most precise description we've seen of the application of poison in fiction in some time. And then she just continues to write. Right. She writes back to back novels that I don't think are among her more famous, like, I know, the Secret Adversary. But this is where she introduces these characters called Tommy and Tuppence that are like a married detective, amateur couple that they do feature in some of her other stories. She writes another book with Hercule Poirot in it. Hercule. And then like a story called the man in the Brown Suit. I have to say it that way, it feels fun. She writes a book called the man in the Brown Suit that is about a man in a brown suit. The part that is interesting to me about that is that this is to me, when we see the beginnings of the impact of colonialism and orientalism start to creep into her work, which is an allegation she's just never going to escape. Like during the. So she. Again, I already talked about how when her mom got sick, they went to Cairo. Well, when her. I think it was 1922, she. When she was obviously married to Archie, they got invited, along with several other. I was going to say tastemakers, but we'll go with that. But like folks of import at the time.

Rebecca Schinsky (59:42)

The influencers.

Vanessa Diaz (59:43)

The influencers, yes. Got invited on something called the Grand Tour, which was this round the world promotion of the Empire Exhibition of 1924, which is billed as the. To showcase the achievements. I'm doing heavy air quotes here of the British Emperor Empire, promote trade and strengthen imperial bonds. It was basically to boost morale after. But this is emphasis on the Empire. Yeah. Like we know what was happening at the time. Right. And that bleeds a lot into her work. And so this character that she talks about in the man in the Brown Suit does go to Africa. And this to me is. I remember reading this and also having these, like. I think we're maybe characterizing some people in interesting ways in these books, but I think I was too young to like really pick up on like where that was headed. And it absolutely continues to. To come back. Then she publishes another book called Secret of the Chimneys, which doesn't have a primary character that's recognizable in the way that a lot of her books is. And then she brings out the one that, although she didn't make her like a household name per se, didn't really put her on the map in a way that to this day we still Talk about. Which is the murder of Roger Aykroyd. It's one of her most famous mysteries today. It broke the mold with this grand reveal. It's considered her masterpiece. If spoilers are a thing people care about about a book for Agatha Christie 99 years ago.

Rebecca Schinsky (60:52)

Spoiler line.

Vanessa Diaz (60:53)

I am way too online and hear way too many people being upset about way too many things. But hey, I'm spoiling the fact that the big thing was that the killer was the narrator. Narrator all along. Yeah. Like, it was a big deal. And I remember when I read that, it, like, absolutely blew my socks off. I was like, oh, I didn't know you could do this. And this is when we come to the gone girl situation, as we've affectionately referred to it at Book Riot. What do you remember of this time?

Rebecca Schinsky (61:19)

I remember that there was trouble in her marriage. Like, things are not going well between her and our Archie. Hadn't she discovered that Archie was having an affair or. Yes. And she just disappears. Like, doesn't leave a note, she just disappears and they. Archie goes looking for her eventually and finds her at a fancy spa somewhere in the country.

Vanessa Diaz (61:42)

Right? Yes, yes.

Rebecca Schinsky (61:44)

Where she has been under an assumed name.

Vanessa Diaz (61:47)

Yes.

Rebecca Schinsky (61:47)

She's going by a different name and. And when he approaches her, it's not immediately clear whether she knows who he is or whether she really knows who she is. Like, the big mystery of this is not where Agatha Christie was. It's did she have some kind of fugue state where she was like out of her mind with rage and grief about his affair and she literally forgot herself and shows up at the spa, like, saying that she is someone else? Or was this, this all a grand performance by a writer who knew how to do these things where she's just pretending to have lost her mind.

Vanessa Diaz (62:27)

This is for most people, I feel like the most interesting part of her life for all of those reasons that we will quickly try to unpack. But. So, yeah, it's 1926 and she goes through what we can call a rough patch. This is when her mother passes away and she takes it hard. Hard. They've gotten. I've seen them describe that once her father passed away, it's like they turned into soulmates. It just again became close in a new kind of trauma, bonded way. Way. And of course, that makes her mental state was probably not great. We're headed towards the end of the year. This is like in December when, yes, she realizes that he has been unfaithful and he straight up just asks her for a divorce. He's taken up with a much younger lady named Nancy Neal, and he wants out. And of course she is. Is not pleased. Not that we would expect her to be. And look, if my mama died, we're headed towards Christmas. And now you tell me you want to leave me for some hussy. Like, I too am putting.

Rebecca Schinsky (63:16)

For real.

Vanessa Diaz (63:17)

Like, she's. You're lucky I didn't put the points. I don't.

Rebecca Schinsky (63:19)

He's like, she's young and she understands me.

Vanessa Diaz (63:22)

Like, you know, she just got that. Like, it's the war.

Rebecca Schinsky (63:25)

He's lucky she ran away and that he didn't get the strict night.

Vanessa Diaz (63:28)

Yep. And that's why I'm like, look, you're lucky because you could have. I could. I. I knew on paper of documented as having known how to do it and probably get away. So fine. But yeah, she decides to instead go with this, like. And I say she decides to because there is still some, you know, like, we're never really going to know how this went down because she also refused. Refuses to.

Rebecca Schinsky (63:47)

She doesn't talk about it.

Vanessa Diaz (63:48)

Talk about it ever again. Not even in that biography. Just, like, skips right on past this part in her life. But. So, yeah, a few months after Archie, because he blows up the life, I think before then. But then they get into. At least. I've seen conflicting reports that they might have gotten into, like, a big old fight. On this night, this is December 3rd, Archie leaves. And on that evening, she leaves her daughter in the care of, I think the maids, maybe somebody else. But she leaves her daughter behind and she takes off. She doesn't say where she's going. She gets in her car. The car is found abandoned the next morning several miles away with her stuff in it, like her clothes. Her driver's license is in there.

Rebecca Schinsky (64:23)

That's right. They're like, did someone take her?

Vanessa Diaz (64:25)

No one knows where she is. This nationwide search ends up going down. No one knows where the hell she went off to. It's. And it's not 11 days until somebody at this hotel in Harrogate is like, I think it was a band member. Basically said, we think we know this lady is because of this house time. She's been splashed all over the papers, right?

Rebecca Schinsky (64:44)

There's newspaper stories every day about the search for Agatha Christie, and they're spending, like, tons of money trying to find her.

Vanessa Diaz (64:52)

This is one of the things that actually made me want to talk about the story because I was like, I do this. I was at a bar and, like, I made some kind of comment about Agatha Christie and some young person was like, what do you mean they didn't find her for 11 days? Like, how would that happen if she was as famous as she was? And like, because she wasn't. We didn't have Instagram, dude. People didn't necessarily know what she looked like. She was not the household name that.

Rebecca Schinsky (65:09)

She like eventually became most of the history. Being a famous author was I think the best kind of fame because people would know your name but they wouldn't recognize you walking down the street.

Vanessa Diaz (65:17)

You could just be out in the world and people weren't harassing you. And so that's how this was able to happen. But then eventually, you know, it becomes a nationwide story because people are looking for her, thinking she's, you know, missing or dead. And then the hotel band members report it. So then the, you know, they come get her, Archie shows up at the hotel and then it's, yeah, not entirely clear, but it does sort of look like she might not recognize him and doesn't know who she is. Cause she's definitely not there under her own name. And so the story that has that persisted for the better Part of 50 years is that she had amnesia when she was found, that she might have sustained like a concussion. The place where they found the car was like looking over a cliff.

Rebecca Schinsky (65:54)

Oh yes, I remember that. That was part of it. Was like, was she gonna drive over the cliff? Did she have like suicidal intent? What was going, she's clearly having a crisis when this happens.

Vanessa Diaz (66:03)

Having a moment. Right. And so that's is the like remaining that that's the prevailing sentiment is that yep, she like was maybe gonna do a thing, maybe didn't, but she kind of got hurt. She ended up showing up at this hotel just looking for refuge. And then they found her and then, oh, she recovered and then she went on to like you know, be Agatha Christie. Now we're going to go back in time and dissect that piece by piece a tiny bit. And what makes this all more complicated? So yes, she left, but before she left, she wrote three letters. One to Archie, one to herself, secretary Carlo, Charlotte, who she'd known for a long time, and to her brother in law, Campbell Christie. The reason we think that she would have written one to Campbell is because she, according to Laura Thompson in the autobiography or the biographies, that he was sort of like the neutral party that wouldn't have been on anybody's side and maybe, maybe a pawn in making sure that like certain things deployed the way that she would have wanted them to. She first drove to the house where Archie was spending the weekend with his friends and with the new lover, but then decided not to go in after all.

Rebecca Schinsky (67:05)

So she's gonna cause a scene, but.

Vanessa Diaz (67:06)

She changes her mind just like, you know what? Let me. Let me not. But then decides to like, not knowing. And the way that Laura describes what might have been a bit of a fugue state in the book, it's like, yeah, we can imagine that she might have been out of her mind, for lack of a better term, realized, you know, last second. I'm not gonna completely go off the deep end here and, like, do this thing. I'm not gonna confront them. But then doesn't know what to do with herself, realizes she's far from home and decides to spend the night in her car in December in England, looking over a cliff. So the thought is like, did she maybe have the intent of like, calling it a day, calling it a wrap? She obviously wasn't in the right mind anyway because she's sitting in this car freezing and just decides to stay there. And then we know that she ends up abandoning the car. Goes to King. King Cross Station in London. So this idea that she just, like, ended up at a hotel is not really holding a lot of water because it's not like she just like, came to and was like, oh, there's a hotel there. Like, she got in the car or abandoned it, went to King's Cross in London. Mails the letter that she wrote to the brother in law from London.

Rebecca Schinsky (68:10)

Homegirl had a plan.

Vanessa Diaz (68:11)

Thank you. This is when she ends up checking in at a hotel. And it's not like she checked it at ye Oldie Motel 6. Like, she picked a kind of bougie hotel.

Rebecca Schinsky (68:21)

Yeah, it's posh.

Vanessa Diaz (68:22)

It's in Harrogate. It was back then called the. Oh, my gosh. It was a spa. It was like the hydro something Spa hotel. I can't remember the name of it anymore.

Rebecca Schinsky (68:28)

Now it's literally went to Take the Waters.

Vanessa Diaz (68:30)

Literally went to Take the Waters. Right. And so she goes. She checks in there under. Not just not her name, but under the name Teresa. Neil.

Rebecca Schinsky (68:38)

Oh, Nancy. Yes. Nancy's last name.

Vanessa Diaz (68:40)

Neil is the. Yeah, the last name is her husband's new lover. And then she just settles in at the hotel and like, waits. Right.

Rebecca Schinsky (68:46)

Is there a better name for your husband's new lover than Nancy? Nancy?

Vanessa Diaz (68:50)

No, there's not. There just isn't. Susan could have been a close second, but we're going with Nancy. And so you kind of filled in the Blanks that I was going to ask you to fill in here anyway, which is like, okay, we can all agree this is a plan, right?

Rebecca Schinsky (69:00)

Sure Sounds like she had one.

Vanessa Diaz (69:02)

And, you know, again, Agatha knew her.

Rebecca Schinsky (69:04)

Way around the red string theory board.

Vanessa Diaz (69:07)

She did. The way that she sent the letters. Surely she figured. And Laura Thompson breaks this out, too. She, I think, thought that I'm going to write these letters. They're going to get into the hands of the right people. It's going to be like, oh, no, you know, Archie's going to come to his senses when he realizes she's in danger. He's going to do a baby, baby, baby, please take me back. And this will all be tidy and wrapped up in no time. Apparently, the way she worded the letters, specifically saying, like, oh, I'll be in the north. I'm going to sort myself out. That it was like, if you were paying attention to the clues that she thinks she's leaving behind. Right. And this, I think, is the flaw in the plan is like, yeah, your mind works different, lady. You are seeing clues and breadcrumbs that to you are like, super obvious. What ends up actually happening is that all of those men that we just mentioned who got letters, including the cops, saw it, crumpled it up and tossed it over their left shoulder. Like, no one did anything with these letters that she thought were lady got the vapors.

Rebecca Schinsky (69:57)

What are we supposed to do with it?

Vanessa Diaz (69:58)

Like, oh, well, like, all right, well, she'll come back if she wants to.

Rebecca Schinsky (70:01)

Tough time for women in mental health, the early 20s.

Vanessa Diaz (70:03)

Really, really, really tough time. It doesn't obviously come go the way she. I think again, I think she thinks that he's gonna come back and they're all gonna ride off into the sunset. But now this is a freaking spectacle, right? Like, she's gotten there. They've gotten the police involved. This is a nationwide manhunt. They have got her the name splash all over the papers. Something you mentioned in the podcast, which is also true, and why this got really out of hand is that this was back when these kinds of hotels would literally publish lists in the news about, like, who was. Who's who, like, who was saying bonkers.

Rebecca Schinsky (70:31)

It's so ridiculous.

Vanessa Diaz (70:32)

Ridiculous. Which I guess to some extent, some of that happens now through social. But it wasn't like, you know, hear you hear ye. The Holiday Inn would like you to know, like, Snoop Dogg or whoever is like, I don't know what. Where these references are coming from. I bet.

Rebecca Schinsky (70:44)

I. You know what? Snoop Dogg does have some stories from the Holiday Inn, I'm sure.

Vanessa Diaz (70:47)

I think I pulled that from the song. And now you know who I am. But so, yeah, like, this doesn't go the way she thinks. And now she realizes, like, oh, crap. Like, this is a much bigger situation.

Rebecca Schinsky (71:00)

Kind of Fatal Attraction.

Vanessa Diaz (71:02)

Come on.

Rebecca Schinsky (71:02)

Come on, man.

Vanessa Diaz (71:03)

Super. And then, you know, Archie does show up. But like, and then.

Rebecca Schinsky (71:08)

But not to. Baby, baby, please.

Vanessa Diaz (71:09)

Nope. And it's not like a tearful, you know that montage at the end of like a rom com. Oh, they come together. It's not that. Like, they're looking at each other. And when I tell you I would pay cash money to be at the dinner that they go to after this, because this is where I am going with the full gone girl situation. Like, was this just a look? We're to going to both put both our cards on the table. You know what you did. I know what I did. Like, what are we going to do to save face for both of us? Did she stick to the, like, amnesia story any longer? Like, who. Who knows what that conversation went? Like, we're never going to know. But I would. Oh, gosh, like, if I could teleport my mom. This is in your.

Rebecca Schinsky (71:42)

Like, you get a time machine and you can go back to like three historical moments.

Vanessa Diaz (71:45)

This is in there. This is absolutely one of them. Like, I just want to know what happened because all we know is again, that she recovered and then went on to have this bonkers, prolific, crazy career in 1930.

Rebecca Schinsky (71:58)

Never talks about this.

Vanessa Diaz (71:59)

No, she doesn't. It's just like one day she's like, oh, I got my memory back and I'm gonna make a lady named Miss Marple. And, like, that's what happens, you know, she marries the man that ends up being like, the love of her life for the rest of her life. In 1930, she met him when she about to curse. She screwed off to. To the. The Orient, basically, to the Orient Express and went to like, Istanbul and Baghdad. Met a couple there that were archaeologists who, like, they became very friendly. They were like, why don't you come back for our next dig? And when she does, she goes and she meets this man, an archaeologist. And then that informs a lot of her other stories like Death on the Nile, Murder in Mesopotamia. Again, colonialism, the other ring of like, folks in these cultures is a thing she's just never going to be able to escape the allegation for. But it does inform her writing. And she makes lots of trips to.

Rebecca Schinsky (72:45)

The Middle east and also product of her times.

Vanessa Diaz (72:47)

That's you know, what I was about to say is like, for as much as that's what they were doing, then, like, you know, anybody who's read. And then there were none. If you do any history, it's like that book had not only one, but two terribly problematic titles. Like, they took the first really bad one and we're like, well then let's just make it Ten Little Indians. And we're like, nope, still bad. The first one was a word I can't say on a mic. Yeah. So, you know, I have to like always go into the writing looking for these things. But the, the big theme that I kind of want to wrap us on because again, this, this is kind of to some extent the end of the story. Like she ends up staying with this man for the rest of her life. She ends up writing in total, over the course of her whole career, over 70 books. Like, I think it's 60 something actual detective novels, 14 short stories and then the longest running play that is still on at the West End to this day, the Mousetrap. Super fun. She ends up writing, you know, and then There Were None. Murder on the Orient Express. Like some of these really splashy books. Again, we get Ms. Marple and then she's made a dead name. You know, The British Empire, 1971, passes away in 76. But her story, I think is just so informed by this life of relative privilege and like happiness and again, being, like we said, the consummate little weirdo that was left to her own devices. That I really think is interesting, specifically when we look at that disappearance, because I think she was just so used. I think you even said this on the show, like, so used to things going her way. So used to being able to trust in her, like, logic and her ability to leave clues. I think she started to think that life was as predictable as the stories that she was crossing around.

Rebecca Schinsky (74:19)

Yeah, well, and now that you've told me about her childhood, like if the thing that her family did every time they were in trouble was just pick up and run away, run away.

Vanessa Diaz (74:27)

And that you just literally took. Exactly. My second point was like, you've learned that a, you can just make up stories and that they will be your defense against a really hard world, that when something gets tough, just run away and go and make something of that. And if you get into a pickle, you can, you know, leave clue, like gingerbread clues your way out into those things. And it didn't work out. And I'm always just so interested by the fact that she Never wanted to talk about it again about this, like, big disappearance, and still went on to have this really wild career in a way that doesn't feel like she'd be able to get away with now when we're just like, all up in the parasocial level of people's. You know, maybe she pull a Beyonce. I don't know where she'd be like.

Rebecca Schinsky (75:06)

You know, Instagram comments would be full of people being like, just admit it. You planned the whole thing. Thing. We all know that you didn't have some kind of incident spa.

Vanessa Diaz (75:13)

Yeah, come on, ma'. Am. I definitely held a theory for, like, a long time, until I read the biography, that this was all research. Like, I was really, really expecting for her to at the end just to be like. And maybe not a bit, because, you know, Laura Thompson makes a really, like, a concerted effort to say that she does not believe that this was, like, publicity flavored. And I think I also agree, like, Laura Thompson ends up actually reenacting for herself what would have happened. Like, she does the thing. She drives the car to this spot and she talks about. I think even on the podcast, it was actually kind of terrifying. Even though I knew this was something I was recreating for myself, but I was putting myself in her mind and what she must have felt like in this moment where things were really falling apart for her. So I also don't think it was publicity, but I did for a long time wonder if this was like, well, I'll show you. And she was gonna work him either into a plot of the book, but wanted to see how it could work out. Where she was like, what if I just enacted half of this? Or I honestly did think at one point that was going to really, really disappear and leave old Archie. Like, what if that was the plan all along? Is for to me to like, fine, you're gonna run off with your new hussy. Well, what if you instead go to jail for possibly doing away with me? I don't think that's the case anymore. It would have been really interesting for it to be her plot, but I don't think that's the way that actually played out.

Rebecca Schinsky (76:26)

Quite a life, though. Yeah, quite a life.

Vanessa Diaz (76:28)

And again, I feel like most of the time when I see her talked about it is about the disappearance, and that obviously is extremely interesting. But the life that she had before that, I think really does just paint who she was as a person and why she, like, dove into stories in the way that she did. And she's just endlessly fascinating to me. And I again, man, if anybody out there comes up with the way to to port yourself somewhere, like invite me and I, I want to be at the whatever hydro something hotel in Harrogate back in the day like stick, let me pour the tea. I don't know, just something.

Rebecca Schinsky (76:58)

This was a wonderful trip down the rabbit hole, Vanessa.

Vanessa Diaz (77:00)

That was today's. Yeah, it would be really fun to get to do this again with different subjects. But this was our inaugural and you know, happy birthday to the Dame, the great Queen of Grim.

Rebecca Schinsky (77:08)

Yes, happy birthday to her. Thanks again. This was super fun. And listeners, you can find everything we talked about in the top half of the show, all the links to those stories and our frontlist foyer books in the show notes below. You can email us@podcastookriot.com, check out Zero to well Read in the podcatcher of your choice. And as always, the Book Riot Podcast is a proud member of the Airwave Podcast Network. Vanessa, we'll see you back soon.

Vanessa Diaz (77:33)

Thank you. Bye. Answer for it is a comedy podcast disguised as a trivia podcast. It's hosted by my pal Funhouse's Elise Willems. She comes up with silly trivia questions which the rest of us have to try and answer, and if we can't, we go off on funny improvised tangents. The cast includes James Willems, a comedian and Pro Wrestler Me AJ Locasio, the voice of Gambit in X Men 97, and Prince Lotor and Voltron and and Zack Anner, an award winning sitcom writer and probably the funniest human being alive. New episodes of the Answer for It podcast are available every Tuesday.