56. The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side by Agatha Christie

I'm struggling to get my daughter to read books.  She is a fast reader and does well in school but just doesn't have the strong desire to read.  For some reason she is fixated on It (the Stephen King book) which I won't let her read because of the super creepy ending.  I also won't let her watch the recent two-part movie because it is absolute dogshit and would ruin all that is good about the book.  I gave her Salem's Lot which I later realized is one of King's most boring books.  She read that but it did not ignite a Stephen King fire in here.  I got her Firestarter which hasn't started.  I know for some reason Agatha Christie is trendy among younger readers so I got her a couple of what I thought were classics.  She started this one and just couldn't keep going.  I took it and read it and can see why.

What is quite good about The Mirror Crack'd is the portrayal of the older English village and the development of the modern estates next door to it.  What's not so good is the mystery itself.  I can see how a 13-year old would not find this all very engaging, especially one who has no real exposure to the subtleties of British social culture.  I was a bit disappointed myself in this one.  The set up is good.  A fading and neurotic British movie actress has moved in with her wealthy producer husband to the old aristocratic mansion of St. Mary Mead.  At a reception in her new home, one of her guests is poisoned and it becomes clear that the poison was meant for the actress.  The more exciting storyline honestly is if Miss Marple can get out from under the thumb of her well-meaning but way too keen and strict caregiver (Miss Marple is quite old at this point).  The mystery itself heads off into a couple of dead ends and the resolution, while clever, is not that satisfying.

Anybody know what are the really good Christie's that will get a 13-year old hooked?  Or any other books.  She is deadset against fantasy and especially all these fantasy series that are popular these days.

55. The Mark of the Warrior by Paul Scott

This behaviour of mine is really not going to reduce the on-deck shelf.  It's reached its horizontal limit, to the edge of the chest of drawers, at which point my rule is not to buy anymore books and only read those on deck.  And yet here I am finding this nice-looking British paperback from my key time period about soldiers in the colonial theatre at the Chainon thrift store.  I would not have bought it if I hadn't also found the Lifegames adult Choose Your Own Adventure book.  Somehow, that enabled me to buy this one as well.  And then I read it right away too!

Mark of the Warrior is the story of Major Craig, an older soldier in the Burmese theatre who is now heading up a training unit in India.  We learn early on that he was leading a retreat when one of the men drowned crossing a river.  This becomes a big deal for him (though we learn it already was) when the dead soldier's brother, A.W. Ramsay, is one of the trainee recruits.  The big philosophical theme is that most men are not made for war, but there are a small minority whose being is basically perfectly suited for the sacrifices of men fighting men. They are natural hunters and put their instinct to survive and kill ahead of their other emotions.  Major Craig is not one of these men.  Cadet Ramsay is.

 

The location, the training exercises and the characters are all richly drawn.  I just really have an issue with the theme itself, especially when it is blasted in the reader's face.  You know how it is going to end up and it is just all so '70s war hero revisionism.  The conflict is that Craig puts Ransom in the lead of one of the two teams in the final, competitive training exercise.  Ransom's team is the local guerrilla army and they are supposed to sneak attack the other team. Ransom gets way to into it, forcing his men to suffer through extra-long marches with minimal rations to simulate potential reality.  Craig encourages this for various thematic reasons that don't really compel (guilt over his brother's death? to release the real soldier in him?  who knows).  

 

I guess I'm being extra critical as it is a well-written book.  I don't know how as an author you could get a richer story out of the setup without having some heavy psychological conflict.  Personally, I would have been happier just to read the setup and playing out of the simulation without all the thematic angst.  But that kind of thing didn't and doesn't sell thanks to the hegemony of the dogma of "conflict" in the  literary world.