Publisher: Witness Impulse/HarperCollins
Publication Date: November 12, 2013
Source: Edelweiss
Review first appeared on Cozy Little Book Journal on February 8, 2014
I'm so glad I finally got around to reading this "previously unpublished" Agatha Christie novella if for no other reason than that it cleared up a question that had been nagging at me: what was Christie's obsession with follies? I didn't even know what an architectural folly was before I started reading Agatha Christie but she has three separate stories about them: Dead Man's Folly, "Greenshaw's Folly" and The Greenshore Folly. Why is she so fond of them? Finally I have an answer.
A folly, by the way, is an ornamental building, usually found in the large garden of a rich person, and is by definition a building that serves no purpose other than decorative but is designed to look like it does have a person. The most common follies are things like miniature replicas of ancient Greek temples or even fake ruins. They're very silly but at least they're aptly named.
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| An example of a folly: The Temple of Modern Philosophy in the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Park in France. This building was left unfinished on purpose, symbolizing that knowledge would never be complete and that philosophy will progress (and also to be pretentious). from Wikipedia |
As it turns out, Agatha Christie probably did not mean to write three separate stories about follies. It all started with this one, The Greenshore Folly, which she wrote as a gift to her local church. Specifically, she promised to donate the sales rights of one of her short stories to the church so they could install stained glass windows (which was apparently Christie's idea in the first place). Unfortunately after she had written it, she discovered that her publisher wouldn't publish it in its current state. It was too long to be a short story, too short to be a novel or even a proper novella, and not right for serialization. How embarrassing. What folly.
