Hello dear readers! This is Miss A.Misra logging in to tell you about another book I read recently. Today’s book is “The Spider’s web” by Agatha Christie.
This book was pretty dense and had a dark plot with some sharp turns in the way. It was a bit sad in the middle but somehow quite hilarious.
Here’s a short description of the story written by me:
Clarissa is the wife of a Foreign office diplomat. She is prone to daydreaming. Literally. She muses about different scenarios that may happen and what she was to do if the DID happen. For example: Supposing I were to become an actress? Supposing Henry( her husband) dies? Or even “Supposing my ice cream melts?”. ( Ok, the last one is not technically mentioned, but it CAN happen!)
The story starts out so innocently you will never believe it takes such a horrifying turn. It begins when Clarrisa brings own three glasses of beer and wine, and asks three of her friends to guess which is of which company. Two of them confidently say three different things. Jeremy, the last one, blandly says they taste the same. To which the other two men say young people have no knowledge on such matters. Later Clarissa reveals they all were of the very same bottle of beer!
Clarissa had an adopted daughter called Pippa, and unlike other stories where the stepparents are mean, Henry and Clarissa are loving and supporting. Pippa absolutely adores them. Her real parents had been abusive so she was taken away. Then things become rather interesting. Clarissa confides in Jeremy what she does when she is bored. Daydreaming random scenarios. It’s entertaining, I must say. I myself sometimes think: What should I do if a fire catches? Supposing the ceiling fan falls right now? And stuff and nonsense like that. Moving on, she just happened to mention to Jeremy that ” Supposing that I find a dead body in the library one day?”
She didn’t have to wonder much longer.
Some time later, when her child Pippa was asleep. and the maids took a day off, Clarissa finds a dead body in the library! Pippa appears suddenly, and starts crying at the sight of it, saying ” Oh no I didn’t mean to- Did I do that?”. Now, obviously Clarissa thinks her daughter somehow killed the man after this small exchange, and decides to make an alibi for herself and her daughter . What’s more, the man who was killed was Pippa’s real father. Obviously, she did the most sensible thing. She panicked.She quickly calls her friends and explains to them the case. Together, they create alibis for themselves in case the police come. They do come, and Clarissa is smart enough to pretend to know nothing about it. Pippa is upstairs, sleeping again ( FYI though, Clarissa gave her a sleeping pill so she falls asleep and does not worry herself, because you might be wondering how someone can sleep so much for one day), so the police don’t take notice of her. But, she’s not the real murderer. Infact, someone among her friends was present there! But who is that person? Will Clarissa be able to convince everyone Pippa is actually innocent? And will the real murderer get caught in time?
The Spider’s Web by Agatha Christie was an amazing novel. It was originally a short story, like she generally writes, and it was novelised by Charles Osborne. It is very dense, as I mentioned before, like three times. Just felt like I needed to throw that in again.
Clarissa is a very important person in the story, as is their gardener, who is actually someone using an alias (:O) Henry, Clarissa’s husband is rather a minor figu Anyways, for thriller and mystery lovers, this book is perfect. However, if you are those sentimental people (no offence) who can’t bear a book character to have a bad past or face death, you might want to skip it. Pippa’s backstory is rather tragic, and (surprise, surprise) my mother cried while reading it. I have to admit, when we learnt who the real murderer was, I was completely thrown off track. It seemed so sudden yet so logically correct. So I won’t disclose who murdered the man yet, because that would pretty much ruin everything for you.
What would be the use of reading it when you know what’s going to happen, anyways? I did not find many complaints about this book even after reading it quite a few times, so it was pretty much ideal for me.
Other short stories you could read, which are related to such genres by Agatha Christie are: The Lamp (it’s related to paranormal stuff, but it was pretty cool), Philomel cottage ( one of my favourites) and ” The strange case of Arthur CarMicheal” ( extremely creepy sci-fi thriller which is, I repeat, very creepy. If you’re scared of ghosts going into animals and inanimate objects, don’t even touch the stuff).
So basically it’s a pretty good book and though I like to read more science-fiction and stuff, I rather liked this one. Well, again, I like ALL sorts of Agatha Christie books, and by saying that I’m basically opposing against what I just said. But whatever.
Anyways, dear readers. goodbye now! See you in another post