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A review by mo_mentan
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
4.0
i understand why this is a fan favourite. there are many interesting characters, especially women, the setting is nice (although not very important) and the solution very satisfying. i must have read this once before, because i knew who did it early on.
once again i'm appalled by the way christie depicts communists and communism. i mean, there sure were many strange ideas floating around and i'm not going to try and make every depression time communist seem like a flaming feminist without any contradictory or questionable views. but she portrays them always in such bad faith and from such a gross bourgeois perspective: they're all violent for violence sake, probably secretly rich, young and dumb and want to kill everyone for no reason. good for that girl she didn't marry him in the end because he absolutely is an asshole, but the irony of the amount of sympathy christie has for those colonizing posh people... well, it would be too much to expect otherwise, because she was one of them. she was also an anti-feminist. but portraying english communists as oh so bad and saying nothing about fascism (when an austrian and an italiam are literally part of the cast) is not a good look imo.
also once more very interesting the amount of leeway and sympathy that is given for beautiful and rich people. they even talk about how lynette's death is worse than other deaths because she's beautiful? and let several people off the hook for crimes that would get amy poc imprisoned for like 20 years in egypt, probably (and christie would't care a bit). heck, the sympathy poirot has for one of the murderers? how and when sympathy and softness are granted, as the interpretation morality, are just so biased and full of double standards.
note on the side: i didn't like the way the narrator voiced colonel race at all (and the portrayal of the locals was as always racist as fuck, even more in his reading than in the text)
once again i'm appalled by the way christie depicts communists and communism. i mean, there sure were many strange ideas floating around and i'm not going to try and make every depression time communist seem like a flaming feminist without any contradictory or questionable views. but she portrays them always in such bad faith and from such a gross bourgeois perspective: they're all violent for violence sake, probably secretly rich, young and dumb and want to kill everyone for no reason. good for that girl she didn't marry him in the end because he absolutely is an asshole, but the irony of the amount of sympathy christie has for those colonizing posh people... well, it would be too much to expect otherwise, because she was one of them. she was also an anti-feminist. but portraying english communists as oh so bad and saying nothing about fascism (when an austrian and an italiam are literally part of the cast) is not a good look imo.
also once more very interesting the amount of leeway and sympathy that is given for beautiful and rich people. they even talk about how lynette's death is worse than other deaths because she's beautiful? and let several people off the hook for crimes that would get amy poc imprisoned for like 20 years in egypt, probably (and christie would't care a bit). heck, the sympathy poirot has for one of the murderers? how and when sympathy and softness are granted, as the interpretation morality, are just so biased and full of double standards.
note on the side: i didn't like the way the narrator voiced colonel race at all (and the portrayal of the locals was as always racist as fuck, even more in his reading than in the text)