Endless Night: Agatha Christie’s Psychological Thriller of Gipsy’s Acre, Greed and a Dream House
The legend of Gipsy’s Acre, a piece of land high in the English countryside, where a newly married couple decide to build their new home. But their happiness does not last long.
Author: Agatha Christie (1890–1976)
Title: Endless Night (1967)
Format: English Kindle edition, 259 pages
Scope: Psychological crime novel (no Poirot or Marple)
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/B0046A9N26 (ASIN B0046A9N26)
A Warning
Warnings of the danger that awaits them come from an old gipsy woman who knows what she is talking about. She tells them to leave, because there are dark superstitions about the place and it would be better to abandon it as soon as possible. They decide to stay, because they do not believe in such things.
Ambition and Greed
The story is told by its protagonist, and ambition, greed and the hunger for power dominate it. It all begins with a death that looks like heart failure: the young wife, out riding her horse in the morning as usual, apparently meets the old woman again and is so frightened that she falls and never recovers. A second, very similar death of another woman causes unease among the locals, and the mystery gives the local doctor and police plenty of headaches.
Michael and Ellie
The narrator is Michael Rogers, a restless young man from a poor background who has drifted from job to job. One day, at Gipsy’s Acre, he meets Ellie, an American girl who, he later discovers, is one of the richest heiresses in the world. They marry, and they commission Michael’s friend, the brilliant but dying architect Santonix, to build their dream house on the cursed land. Christie lets Michael tell the story in his own voice, and that voice is one of the most remarkable things in the book.
A Title From Blake
The title comes from William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence: "Every Night and every Morn / Some to Misery are Born. / Every Morn and every Night / Some are Born to sweet delight, / Some are Born to Endless Night." Ellie sings the lines, and they echo through the novel, giving it a haunting, fated quality quite unlike Christie’s usual tone.
Christie at Seventy-Six
Christie wrote the book in 1967, at the age of seventy-six, and many critics consider it the best of her late novels. She herself counted it among her favourites. It shows that, after more than forty years of detective fiction, she could still surprise her readers, and it anticipates the modern psychological thriller with its unreliable atmosphere and its exploration of desire and envy.
Adaptations
It was filmed in 1972 with Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett, and adapted for television in 2013 as part of the Marple series, with Miss Marple added to the story.
A Word of Advice
Read it knowing as little as possible. Avoid reviews and summaries: the less you know, the stronger the effect of the final chapters.
Then, once you have finished, go back to the first chapter.
Not a Typical Christie
There is no great detective here, no gathering of suspects in the library, no neat explanation by a brilliant outsider. Instead, Christie offers a story of atmosphere and character, of a young couple’s dream and the shadows gathering around it. Readers who usually find her puzzles too mechanical are often surprised by this book, while devoted fans will enjoy seeing how she uses her old skills to create something new.
Why Read It
Written late in Christie’s career, Endless Night is one of her darkest and most surprising books, closer to a psychological thriller than to a classic whodunnit. Readers who think they know all her tricks will be caught out.
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